The American Friends Service Committee has recently published a report titled  A New Path, Toward a Humane Immigration Policy.   You can download a copy by going to their web site .

The Friends (sometimes called the Quakers) were one of the earliest groups to be active in the fight against slavery that began in the late 1700's.  The movie Amazing Grace tells the compelling story of the Quaker MP William Wilberforce and his 30 year struggle to end the British slave trade.  Would the Friends in the USA in 1845 have published a report titled "A New Path: Toward a Humane Slavery Policy?

In a book published in October 2006: Deporting Our Souls.... Values, Morality and Immigration Policy, Bill Ong Hing makes a very strong case for a much more humane immigration policy in the United States.

Hing who is on the faculty at UC Davis Law School argues that we need a new approach to immigration: "My solution is simple." He writes. "Calm down. Welcome undocumented workers...." His is a refreshing voice in a storm of fear. He uses lots of examples showing how the US's past immigration policy has mistreated people. He also shows how applications of the same policies are effecting people today. One example he uses is how Operation Gatekeeper, which sealed the border near El Paso drove the migrants into the Arizona desert where thousands have died.

Three New Ideas in One Book

In “The Birthright Lottery” Ayelet Shachar develops three arguments that will have a positive and profound effect on the struggle for more people to gain the legal right to migrate.  The book is a series of legal arguments that are easy to follow, convincing and well footnoted.  If you are interested in the immigration debate this book belongs on your shelf between Bill Ong Hing’s Deporting our Souls and Lant Pritchett’s Let Their People Come .