"Even self-identified Tea Party Republicans respond three to two in favor of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Every other group — Republicans in general, independents and especially Democrats — is largely pro-immigrant.
Scratch the surface, though, and you’ll pretty quickly find that many Americans are closer to my grandfather’s way of seeing things than they might find comfortable acknowledging. I am referring not to the racial animus but to the faulty economic logic. We generally support immigration when the immigrants are different from us...
Few of us are calling for the thing that basic economic analysis shows would benefit nearly all of us: radically open borders. And yet the economic benefits of immigration may be the most settled fact in economics...
So why don’t we open up? The chief logical mistake we make is something called the Lump of Labor Fallacy: the erroneous notion that there is only so much work to be done and that no one can get a job without taking one from someone else."
Huh.
This article hardcore does not challenge stereotypes of immigrants, but it presents an economic perspective I hadn't been exposed to before.
Though, given that it's the New York Times, this is probably a biased way to be introduced to this topic.
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