“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.” - David Hume

My copy of Dowell Myers’ Immigrants and Boomers is marked-up with three shades of highlighter pens, pencil scrawlings (saying things like: “Are declining birth rates in Europe anything to do with white culture?”, “Do diversified cultures bring society to a higher level of being, as the Hegelian dialectic would suggest, through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis?” or simply, “?”) and post-its. By the time I reached the last page, I had successfully turned this brand-new, immaculate hard cover into a worn-out high school text book.

This is a good sign.

The more “interactive” I become with a book, the more challenged or awed I have been. In this case, I wasn’t particularly “awed,” other than perhaps quietly, since the reading experience was more hard work than pleasure, but I was certainly challenged. Challenged to the point that my perceptions and knowledge have been greatly enhanced, and my ignorance about the topic of immigration made clear. But Myers is by no means attempting to brainwash his audience. Yes, his tone leans a little more toward the side of inclusive rather than exclusive immigration policy, but even that perspective is easily forgiven.

Myers is an optimist.

It’s no wonder that, as Myers explains in the May 2008 afterword, the book has received “little attention” from “advocates at either extreme.” Open-minded, fact-establishing works that find stability in a “neutral zone” aren’t exactly spine-tinglers. They evoke little emotion, have no plot, no mystery, no drama and no surprise ending. They don’t make you angry. They don’t evoke a visceral sense of injustice, like metal on the tongue. But if you want to understand the world from a deeper, more intelligent level, then this type of informative work is essential, and rare.

Rather than being driven by a persistent narrator, the only thing tilting the balance in Immigrants and Boomers is attitude. Do you believe that people are essentially good, or essentially bad? Does man strive to better himself, or does he leave himself to ruin?

If you believe the former then you can anticipate a not-too-distant world where second and third generation immigrants have climbed the ladder of social mobility and established themselves as educated, middle-class taxpayers, who are both socially and politically aware of their role in the bigger picture.

However, you might choose to be pessimistic. Immigrants don’t want to better themselves. They don’t want to contribute to society. They don’t want to work hard or escape the poverty cycle. To you, the world of the future is plagued by the parasitical movement of people from one place to another.

As Myers shows, neither perspective is wrong. They are both rooted in some form of reality. The trick is figuring out which reality contains the most truth. Myers does this by way of lots, and lots, of statistical information. Pouring out numbers and pasting graphs into every other page makes the book a cumbersome read, but a weighty topic doesn’t deserve anything less.

The level of understanding that Myers provides, in exchange for some intensive work on the reader’s part, is exceptional. So many of the nation’s prejudices could be expelled, or at least calmed, by studying the contents of Immigrants and Boomers. It ignites questions and encourages philosophizing. It explains, and in doing so simplifies, a complicated issue. No matter how open-minded we believe ourselves to be, we have all been party to the immigration debate, whether directly or indirectly, and we all have an opinion, whether consciously or subconsciously. But as Myers explains, just as readers crave drama, citizens have a tendency to “extrapolate.” This is partially due to the nature of the media industry: audiences are fed by “alarming” statistics. Crime rates, the number of sexually transmitted diseases, stock values, high school drop-out rates… as soon as the numbers start to slope, upwards or downwards, it’s a story. And as Myers explains, “once our expectations have been set and they are entrenched in our common knowledge, they can be sustained by a relatively small amount of information.” (P. 25)

[A recent example: gas prices. During the summer months of 2008, every media outlet screamed with stories about rising gas prices. But as soon as the prices started to fall, the stories disappeared. Even after gas prices had returned to a level of relative normalcy, advertisers continued to pitch their products to an audience afraid of pump prices (“High gas prices getting you down?”). Only when gas prices fell to some sort of “newsworthy” low did the stories begin to emerge once again.]

I’m not sure I buy the idea that the public “extrapolate” to the extent Myers seems to think they do, but I certainly agree that public opinion is like a tsunami: once on course, it’s very difficult to re-route. Immigration seems to a particularly uncompromising topic. The assumption that America is continually being invaded by an increasing number of illegal immigrants is ingrained into the public mindset, making the issue seem much more black and white than it actually is. Myers successfully illuminates the grey areas, expanding the idea of cross-country movement into a complicated, and yet somewhat organic, philosophy. The concepts of “upward mobility”, of “assimilation”, of “political lag”, are all extremely complex ideas that branch out from what many mistakenly perceive to be a single, self-contained point. Myers succeeds in emphasizing the connectedness of it all, thanks to the book’s tight organization and transitions, as well as impeccable research.

There is something very fulfilling about accessing such clean information. Being able to sit back and think, without being pressured by a narrator persistent with opinion, is an illuminating experience. But there is no entertainment here. No drama in the pages. No dizzying twist. The reader must be willing to be a scholar.

I paid my dues, sharpened my pencils and spent my post-its, and by the end I couldn’t help feeling optimistic.