Book Review: Aviva Chomsky’s “‘They Take Our Jobs!’ And 20 Other Myths About Immigration”

Aviva Chomsky is a professor of history and coordinator of the Latin American studies program at Salem State University. Before that she was a research associate at Harvard University, where she focused on Caribbean and Latin American history. She has a B.A. in Spanish and Portuguese, an M.A. in history, and a Ph.D. in history.

For over twenty-five years, she has been active with Latin American solidarity and immigrants’ rights issues. Some of her works are Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration; Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal; and Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class.

Myth: Immigrants Take American Jobs

• The modern economy is so “globally integrated” that the idea of “American jobs” is largely impractical (Chomsky 3).
• Many industries try to reduce their costs by hiring the “poorest, most vulnerable” workers (Chomsky 3).
• Due to cutbacks in social spending (since the Reagan administration) and a deregulation of “major sectors of the economy,” there has been an increase in plant/factory closures and outsourcing (Chomsky 3)
• Businesses want to keep their expenses…