Immigration policy is hard, involving difficult decisions and trade-offs. But, as Alan Manning – former chair of the UK's Migration Advisory Committee – makes clear, this doesn't mean that we can't do much better.

We should start, Manning says, by ditching simplistic views that frame immigration as either wholly good or wholly bad. We will always have, and need, some level of immigration. But, just as inevitably, we will have rules on who can and cannot immigrate as more people are likely to want to move to high-income countries than residents will want to admit. To set those rules, we need reliable evidence to adjudicate among the often-competing claims of the economy, culture, justice and democracy. Manning supplies such evidence in abundance, guiding us through cutting-edge international research on the many ways immigration affects people's lives, including effects on their jobs and incomes, their taxes and public services, and their communities.

Why Immigration Policy Is Hard is an indispensable resource for informed debate on one of the most charged subjects in public life today.