To avoid inflaming his liberal critics, Charles Murray specifically states that he won't talk about illegal immigration in discussing the state of changes in the white working class over the last 50 years. Fortunately,
Ross Douthat in the NYT points out how unrealistic this is:
Third, if we expect less-educated Americans to compete with low-wage workers in Asia and Latin America, we shouldn’t be welcoming millions of immigrants who compete with them domestically as well. Immigration benefits the economy over all, but it can lower wages and disrupt communities, and there’s no reason to ask an already-burdened working class to bear these costs alone. Here the leading Republican candidates have the right idea: We should welcome more high-skilled immigrants, while making it as hard as possible for employers to hire low-skilled workers off the books.
Overall, this aside the debate over the white working class has have been a little surreal, with Murray, who lives in a rural town being attacked for insensitivity to the white working class by people who wouldn't live amongst them if you paid them to.
