Legal presence
The Politics of Refuge: Sanctuary Cities, Crime, and Undocumented Immigration
Benjamin Gonzalez, Loren Collingwood & Stephen Omar El-Khatib
Urban Affairs Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article assesses the claim that sanctuary cities — defined as cities that expressly forbid city officials or police departments from inquiring into an individual’s immigration status — are associated with post hoc increases in crime. We employ a causal inference matching strategy to compare similarly situated cities where key variables are the same across the cities except the sanctuary status of the city. We find no statistically discernible difference in violent crime, rape, or property crime rates across the cities. Our findings provide evidence that sanctuary policies have no effect on crime rates, despite narratives to the contrary. The potential benefits of sanctuary cities, such as better incorporation of the undocumented community and cooperation with police, thus have little cost for the cities in question in terms of crime.
Tradability and the Labor-Market Impact of Immigration: Theory and Evidence from the U.S.
Ariel Burstein et al.
NBER Working Paper, April 2017
Abstract:
In this paper, we show that labor-market adjustment to immigration differs across tradable and nontradable occupations. Theoretically, we derive a simple condition under which the arrival of foreign-born labor crowds native-born workers out of (or into) immigrant-intensive jobs, thus lowering (or raising) relative wages in these occupations, and explain why this process differs within tradable versus within nontradable activities. Using data for U.S. commuting zones over the period 1980 to 2012, we find that consistent with our theory a local influx of immigrants crowds out employment of native-born workers in more relative to less immigrant-intensive nontradable jobs, but has no such effect within tradable occupations. Further analysis of occupation wage bills is consistent with adjustment to immigration within tradables occurring more through changes in output (versus changes in prices) when compared to adjustment within nontradables, thus confirming the theoretical mechanism behind differential crowding out between the two sets of jobs. We then build on these insights to construct a quantitative framework to evaluate the consequences of counterfactual changes in U.S. immigration. Reducing inflows from Latin America, which tends to send low-skilled immigrants to specific U.S. regions, raises local wages for native-born workers in more relative to less-exposed nontradable occupations by much more than for similarly differentially exposed tradable jobs. By contrast, increasing the inflow of high-skilled immigrants, who are not so concentrated geographically, causes tradables and nontradables to adjust in a more similar fashion. For the nontradable-tradable distinction in labor-market adjustment to be manifest, as we find to be the case in our empirical analysis, regional economies must vary in their exposure to an immigration shock.
College prospects and risky behavior among Mexican immigrant youth: The effects of in-state tuition policies on schooling and childbearing
Shiva Koohi
Economics of Education Review, June 2017, Pages 162–174
Abstract:
This paper examines how a reduction in the cost of college for undocumented students affects college enrollment and adolescent risky behaviors. Prior to 2001, undocumented students in the United States faced high out-of-state tuition costs at public colleges and universities. From 2001 to 2014, twenty-one states passed in-state tuition policies, reducing the average cost of college by more than half for these students. To the extent that teens are forward-looking and aware that lower tuition increases the likelihood of attending college, this price reduction should decrease the incidence of risky behavior during adolescence among the undocumented. Exploiting the variation in timing of in-state tuition policies across states and using Mexican foreign-born non-citizenship as a proxy for undocumented status, I find that these policies increase college enrollment by about 1.2 percentage points (12% of the sample mean), decrease high school dropout incidence by about 5 percentage points for female youth (27% of the sample mean), and decrease the likelihood of first birth before age 20 by 2 percentage points (9% of the sample mean).
To Stay or Not to Stay: Location Choice of Foreign Born U.S. Doctorates
Scott Adams, Niloy Bose & Chandramouli Banerjee
University of Wisconsin Working Paper, November 2016
Abstract:
Over the past few decades, foreign-born U.S. PhDs have play a crucial role in shaping the landscape of U.S. skilled workforce. Not all foreign-born U.S. doctorates choose to remain in the U.S. workforce. This paper uses a newly assembled set of data – the International Survey of Doctoral Recipients (ISDR) – assembled by the National Science Foundation to explore the factors, both at the individual as well as at the country level, that are relevant for the location choice of work for foreign-born individuals receiving their doctorates from the U.S. Our analysis, identifies a number of demographic and country specific factors that have implications for the location choice. Among those one particular factor stands out. We find that foreign-born U.S. PhDs who choose to emigrate are positively selected in terms of skill as measured by the quality of the school they attended. This result deserves attention as it implies that the U.S. may be losing premium talents to global competition.
Country-Specific Investments and the Rights of Non-Citizen
Adam Chilton & Eric Posner
University of Chicago Working Paper, February 2017
Abstract:
In a 2007 article, Adam Cox and Eric Posner developed a “Second Order” theory of immigration law that offered predictions about when countries are likely to provide non-citizens with strong legal protections from removal. They argued that states benefit when migrants make “country-specific” investments, but that migrants are only willing to make those investments when they are afforded strong legal protections that would secure their place in the host country. One implication of this theory was that because countries with less common national languages require greater country-specific investments from migrants, those countries are likely to provide migrants with strong legal protections. In this essay, we empirically evaluate that hypothesis. Consistent with the theory, we find that countries with less common national languages are more likely to provide a Right to Asylum in their constitution or sign Bilateral Labor Agreements.
Labor Market Disparities Between African Americans and Afro Caribbeans: Reexamining the Role of Immigrant Selectivity
Mosi Adesina Ifatunji
Sociological Forum, forthcoming
Abstract:
Black immigrants from the Caribbean have long attained greater labor market success than African Americans. The most recent studies show that Afro Caribbeans have earnings that are approximately 16% greater than African Americans and that Afro Caribbeans are as much as 21% more likely to be employed than African Americans. The most prominent explanation for greater Afro Caribbean success is that, because they have chosen to migrate, Afro Caribbeans are positively self-selected on characteristics that are key for success in the U.S. labor market. Proponents of immigrant selectivity argue that migrants have greater levels of both hard and soft skills than nonmigrants. Using data from the National Survey of American Life — the first social survey to provide a nationally representative sample of both African Americans and Afro Caribbeans — this study finds that Afro Caribbeans have greater hard skills than African Americans but split the difference on two measures of soft skills: African Americans and Afro Caribbeans are matched on John Henryism, but African Americans have greater personal mastery than Afro Caribbeans. Contrary to expectations, controlling for differences in hard and soft skills does not provide for a meaningful reduction in labor market disparities between African Americans and Afro Caribbeans.
The Behavioral Immune System Shapes Political Intuitions: Why and How Individual Differences in Disgust Sensitivity Underlie Opposition to Immigration
Lene Aarøe, Michael Bang Petersen & Kevin Arceneaux
American Political Science Review, May 2017, Pages 277-294
Abstract:
We present, test, and extend a theoretical framework that connects disgust, a powerful basic human emotion, to political attitudes through psychological mechanisms designed to protect humans from disease. These mechanisms work outside of conscious awareness, and in modern environments, they can motivate individuals to avoid intergroup contact by opposing immigration. We report a meta-analysis of previous tests in the psychological sciences and conduct, for the first time, a series of tests in nationally representative samples collected in the United States and Denmark that integrate the role of disgust and the behavioral immune system into established models of emotional processing and political attitude formation. In doing so, we offer an explanation for why peaceful integration and interaction between ethnic majority and minorities is so hard to achieve.
Do limited English students jeopardize the education of other students? Lessons from the North Carolina public school system
Timothy Diette & Ruth Uwaifo Oyelere
Education Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The significant increase in immigration has altered the ethnic composition of public schools in many states. Given the perceived negative impact of immigrant students by some, we are interested in investigating whether higher concentrations of students with limited English (LE) skills in a school affect the academic performance of native students. To address this question, we analyze education data from North Carolina using LE ability as a proxy for immigrant students who are not native English speakers. Our analysis provides limited evidence of negative peer effects of LE students, though the effects are heterogeneous and the magnitudes are small.
The Economic Payoff of Name Americanization
Costanza Biavaschi, Corrado Giulietti & Zahra Siddique
Journal of Labor Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We provide the first evidence on the magnitude and consequences of the Americanization of migrants names in the early 20th century. We construct a longitudinal dataset of naturalization records, tracking migrants and their naming choices over time. We consistently find that migrants who Americanized their names experienced larger occupational upgrading than those who did not. Name Americanization embodies an intention to assimilate among low-skilled migrants and reveals the existence of preferences for American names within the labor market. We conclude that the trade-off between individual identity and labor market success was present then, as it is today.
The Catholic Church and Mexican American Social Mobility in the Postwar Midwest: Evidence from Life and Family Histories
Bienvenido Ruiz et al.
Social Currents, forthcoming
Abstract:
Religious affiliation has long been recognized as a relevant factor among the variables that intervene in the integration of immigrants to American society. While previous generations of many predominantly Roman Catholic ethnic groups are thought to have been helped along their way to assimilation by strong institutional support from American Catholic church institutions, Latinos, and in particular Mexican Americans, are considered an exception. This study examines the role that inclusion in Catholic institutions played in the social mobility experienced by multigenerational families of Mexican immigrant origin in the Midwest during the decades between 1945 and 1975. The analysis of life and family histories collected from in-depth interviews with older second- and third-generation Mexican Americans illustrates how integration into urban Catholic institutions and communities was instrumental in the upward social mobility observed in many of their family trajectories during the postwar decades. In particular, access to parochial schools and other institutions in the Catholic educational system once provided the children and grandchildren of Mexican immigrants the forms of human and social capital that allowed many in that generation to attain social mobility.
Stymied ambition: Does a lack of economic freedom lead to migration?
Daniel Meierrieks & Laura Renner
Journal of Population Economics, July 2017, Pages 977–1005
Abstract:
We investigate the relationship between economic freedom and international migration for the 1980–2010 period using a dataset on migration from 91 emerging countries to the 20 most attractive OECD destination countries. We find that more economic freedom at home discourages high-skilled migration, but not low-skilled migration. The negative association between economic freedom and high-skilled emigration also holds when we estimate (dynamic) panel models that allow for endogeneity in the economic freedom-migration nexus. In sum, our findings suggest that high-skilled migration is especially responsive to the economic incentives resulting from economic freedom.
New Findings on the Fiscal Impact of Immigration in the United States
Pia Orrenius
Federal Reserve Working Paper, April 2017
Abstract:
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2016) report on the economic and fiscal effects of immigration included the first set of comprehensive fiscal impacts published in twenty years. The estimates highlight the pivotal role of the public goods assumption. If immigrants are assigned the average cost of public goods, such as national defense and interest on the debt, then immigration’s fiscal impact is negative in both the short and long run. If, instead, immigrants are assigned the marginal cost of public goods, then the long-run fiscal impact is positive and the short-run effect is negative but very small (less negative than that of natives). Highly educated immigrants confer large positive fiscal impacts, contributing far more in taxes than they consume in public benefits. To the extent that immigrants impose net costs, these are concentrated at the state and local level and are largely due to the costs of public schooling.
Defunding women’s health clinics exacerbates Hispanic disparity in preventive care
David Slusky
Economics Letters, July 2017, Pages 61–64
Abstract:
To prevent abortions, many states have cut funding for women’s health, reducing access, including to preventive care. Merging BRFSS data with clinic locations from a network of women’s health clinics, this paper estimates the relative impact of an increase in the driving distance to the nearest clinic on preventive care. For Hispanics women, a 100-mile increase decreases the rates of clinical breast exams by 23%, Pap tests by 16% and checkups by 14%. For non-Hispanics, there are no statistically significant results.