There is a steady drum beat of anti immigrant sentiment throughout history. But what's different now is that there is a group that's pulling away in trying to make the case for emigration. Emigrants came here because the streets were paved with gold, which is where your title of your book comes from, streets of gold. And people flocked to the american s to all kinds of pieces f American countryside before 19 21. There's a view that emigration ast was pretty great but it's not nearly as rosy today.
Immigration to the United States, say Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan, is more novel than short story: It takes decades for new immigrants to catch up economically. But their kids on average thrive economically and have higher rates of upward mobility than American-born kids. Abramitzky and Boustan talk about their book Streets of Gold with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Using an extraordinary data set of millions of Americans, Boustan and Abramitzky find that today's immigrants and their children are surprisingly similar to yesterday's.