QUESTION: Immigration Reform

question / pregunta: 

What do experts who study this topic agree on, and what are they still debating?

Answers

To address your question , I would first encourage you to step back and ask - who is an expert? What qualifies someone, who confers this title? Who is paying the expert's bills? Is it possible to find "experts" who will agree with whatever you pay them to agree with? These questions are essential to approach any subject, particularly one so politically charged.

By adding "site:.edu" (without quotes) to some Google searches, you can limit results to only sites that come from educational websites. I used a few different combinations of terms, adding "study" and/or "resources" to "immigration reform" - looking for college websites that gathered resources which might help you determine what consensus there might be out there. Here are a few starting points selected from the results I got.

Last year ("2008-2009"), NYU sponsored a debate contest, in which immigration reform was the topic. They put together a resource list for students which compiles a lot of information.

Georgetown Law Library has a resource page for immigration law. Many of the resources here are subscription only, so you may want to check it out in an academic library, or be signed in to your school library's website from off-campus.

It's a few years old now, dating back to 1990-97, but the University of Texas at Austin has the papers of the US Commission on Immigration Reform's research posted online.

The National Academies Press posts many books created with government-funded research free for reading online, including The Immigration Debate: Studies on the Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, published 1998. You can also find a link for "related titles" on each book's page, which can lead you to additional information.