Newcomers
Residential Mobility Constraints and Immigration Restrictionism
Yamil Velez
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prevailing theories of public opinion toward immigration posit that responses to immigration are partially a function of local area demographics. However, evaluations of these theories suffer from the critique that local immigration patterns and attitudes toward immigrants are endogenous due to residential self-selection. Recent efforts attempt to address this problem by using experimental designs that reduce the possibility of selection bias. Instead of viewing residential mobility as a source of bias, I develop a theory that treats residential mobility and political behavior as interconnected strategies for responding to demographic change. Across two large sample studies, I find that residents who live in diversifying communities and face residential mobility constraints are more likely to express dissatisfaction with immigration and less likely to report desires to move than those who reside in more exit-friendly destinations.
Estimating the Potential Effects of Adding a Citizenship Question to the 2020 Census
David Brown et al.
U.S. Census Bureau Working Paper, January 2019
Abstract:
The self-response rate is a key driver of the cost and quality of a census. The addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census could affect the self-response rate. We predict the effect of the addition of a citizenship question on self-response by comparing mail response rates in the 2010 Census, which did not have a citizenship question, and the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS), which included a citizenship question for the same housing units. To distinguish a citizenship question effect from other factors, we compare the actual ACS-Census difference in response rates for households that may contain noncitizens to the ACS-Census difference for all-U.S. citizen households.We estimate the addition of a citizenship question will have a 5.8 percentage point (ppt) larger effect on self-response rates in households that may have noncitizens relative to all-U.S. citizen households. Noncitizens are also 36.2 ppts less likely to report citizenship status that is consistent with administrative records compared to citizens. Only 6.2 ppts of this difference is explained by observed characteristics.
Attribute Affinity: U.S. Natives’ Attitudes Toward Immigrants
Adam Berinsky et al.
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the extent to which relevant social identity traits shared between two individuals — what we term “attribute affinity” — can moderate out-group hostility. We argue that in-group affinity is a powerful force in shaping preferences over potential immigrants. We focus on two closely related, yet distinct, dimensions of identity: religion and religiosity. Using evidence from three surveys that included two embedded experiments, we show that sharing strength in religious practice can diminish strong aversion to immigrants of different religious affiliations. We find that, among highly religious U.S. natives, anti-Muslim bias is lower toward very religious Muslims, compared to non-religious Muslims. This attenuating effect of attribute affinity with respect to religiosity on anti-Muslim bias presents the strongest evidence supporting our argument.
Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Innovation in the U.S. High-Tech Sector
David Brown et al.
NBER Working Paper, February 2019
Abstract:
We estimate differences in innovation behavior between foreign versus U.S.-born entrepreneurs in high-tech industries. Our data come from the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs, a random sample of firms with detailed information on owner characteristics and innovation activities. We find uniformly higher rates of innovation in immigrant-owned firms for 15 of 16 different innovation measures; the only exception is for copyright/trademark. The immigrant advantage holds for older firms as well as for recent start-ups and for every level of the entrepreneur’s education. The size of the estimated immigrant-native differences in product and process innovation activities rises with detailed controls for demographic and human capital characteristics but falls for R&D and patenting. Controlling for finance, motivations, and industry reduces all coefficients, but for most measures and specifications immigrants are estimated to have a sizable advantage in innovation.
Immigration and Preferences for Redistribution in Europe
Alberto Alesina, Elie Murard & Hillel Rapoport
NBER Working Paper, February 2019
Abstract:
We examine the relationship between immigration and attitudes toward redistribution using a newly assembled data set of immigrant stocks for 140 regions of 16 Western European countries. Exploiting within-country variations in the share of immigrants at the regional level, we find that native respondents display lower support for redistribution when the share of immigrants in their residence region is higher. This negative association is driven by regions of countries with relatively large Welfare States and by respondents at the center or at the right of the political spectrum. The effects are also stronger when immigrants originate from Middle-Eastern countries, are less skilled than natives, and experience more residential segregation. These results are unlikely to be driven by immigrants' endogenous location choices.
The Effect of Increasing Immigration Enforcement on the Labor Supply of High-Skilled Citizen Women
Chloe East & Andrea Velasquez
University of Colorado Working Paper, December 2018
Abstract:
Recent decades have seen a surge in local interior immigration enforcement. In this paper we examine a little discussed, but potentially important, spillover effect of enforcement policies: changes in high-skilled citizen women's labor supply due to changes in the cost of outsourcing household production. Undocumented immigrants disproportionately supply household services - e.g. as maids, cooks, child care workers, and gardeners - so the price of outsourcing these services is expected to rise in response to enforcement. Combining data on the timing and location of these enforcement policies, with data on labor supply from the American Community Survey over 2005-2012, we implement a difference-in-difference approach with location and year fixed effects to take advantage of the staggered implementation of these policies. We find that an increase in intensity of immigration enforcement in a local area reduced the labor supply of citizen college-educated women with children. Several results suggest that changes in the price of outsourcing are driving these results: 1) we see an increase in time spent on household production tasks among mothers in the American Time Use Survey, 2) we confirm that there is an increase in the wages of household workers, and 3) we see no similar effects for high-skilled men or women without children. This indicates there are important unintended consequences of enforcement policies on high-skilled citizen mothers' ability to work.
Immigrant Opposition in a Changing National Demographic
Maneesh Arora
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article advances the argument that the effects of demographic change on individual-level immigration policy preferences is dependent on the level of segregation in the individuals’ local context. Increases in the immigrant population in highly segregated counties should increase opposition to immigration because opportunities for contact and exposure are missing and group differences are emphasized. Meanwhile, population increases in more integrated counties should lead to an alleviation of interethnic tensions due to more frequent opportunities for contact. Furthermore, whites may react differently to changes in racial/ethnic composition of a local context depending on the particular group moving into the area because some groups are closer to fulfilling Allport’s equal status contact condition than others. The empirical analysis finds strong support for the first assertion that population growth of Latina/os and Asian Americans in highly segregated areas results in support for restrictive immigration policy, while population growth in more integrated areas results in support for permissive immigration policy. The results are inconclusive for the second assertion as the effects of Asian American and Latina/o population growth are so highly dependent on segregation levels.
Do Immigrants Delay Retirement and Social Security Claiming?
Mary Lopez & Sita Slavov
NBER Working Paper, January 2019
Abstract:
As the share of older immigrants residing in the U.S. begins to rise, it is important to understand how immigrants’ retirement behavior and security compare to that of natives. This question has implications for the impact of immigration on government finances and for the retirement security of immigrants. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine how immigrants’ retirement and Social Security claiming patterns compare to those of natives. We find that immigrants are significantly less likely than natives to retire or claim Social Security in their early 60s. We do not find heterogeneous effects by ethnicity or age of arrival to the U.S. We also find no evidence that immigrants exit the survey at higher rates than U.S. natives in their late 50s through 60s, a finding that is consistent with immigrants retiring in the U.S. rather than abroad.
Forgoing Food Assistance out of Fear: Simulating the Child Poverty Impact of Making SNAP a Legal Liability for Immigrants
Jennifer Laird et al.
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, February 2019
Abstract:
Public charge, a term used by immigration officials for over 100 years, refers to a person who relies on public assistance at the government’s expense. Immigrants who are deemed at high risk of becoming a public charge can be denied green cards; those outside of the United States can be denied entry. Current public charge policy largely applies to cash benefits. The Department of Homeland Security has proposed a regulation that will allow officials to consider the take-up of both cash and non-cash benefits when making public charge determinations. Nearly 90 percent of children with immigrant parents are U.S.-born and therefore eligible for public benefits. Most of these children live in mixed-status households. We examine the potential child poverty impact of the proposed regulation. Our results show that depending on the chilling effect, more than 2 million citizen children could lose access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program as a result of the proposed regulation.
The immigrant labeling effect: The role of immigrant group labels in prejudice against noncitizens
Julian Rucker, Mary Murphy & Victor Quintanilla
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Five experiments (N = 2,251) and a meta-analysis examine how group labels shape Americans’ levels of prejudice, behavioral intentions, and policy preferences toward immigrants living in the US without authorization. These studies extend research documenting how the perceived negativity of group labels (e.g., those describing gay people) affects people’s downstream attitudes. To this end, Study 1 examines the perceived negativity of the five most commonly used labels to describe unauthorized immigrants. Study 2 found that relatively negative (vs. neutral) labels (e.g., illegal aliens vs. noncitizens) engendered more prejudice, punitive behavioral intentions, and greater support for punitive policies. Study 3 replicates these effects and examines the role of familiarity. People who personally knew members of the group were more positive towards them overall, but were nevertheless susceptible to the labels’ influence. Studies 4 and 5 provide additional replications and explore prejudice as a mediator of behavioral intentions and policy preferences.
Cultural Baggage: Do Immigrants Import Corruption?
Jamie Bologna Pavlik, Estefania Lujan Padilla & Benjamin Powell
Southern Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do immigrants undermine culture in a way that destroys productivity in destination countries? Some scholars have argued that because immigrants come from countries with dysfunctional social capital — norms and institutions — they will import it and pollute the social capital in destination countries. One potential channel through which this could occur is corruption. We examine stocks and flows of immigrants over a 20‐year time period to see if corruption increased in destination countries. We generally find that immigration is not associated with increases in corruption. Additionally, we find that immigration tends to decrease corruption in destination countries with low levels of corruption or high levels of economic freedom.
“Sad Day for the UK”: The Linking of Debates about Settling Refugee Children in the UK with Brexit on an Anti‐Immigrant News Website
Simon Goodman & Amrita Narang
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper uniquely demonstrates how UK debates about supporting child refugees during the ‘refugee crisis’ came to be used as support for leaving the European Union (EU). The research question ‘how did users of a news website respond to a report about the UK government's decision to allow child refugees into the UK?’ is addressed with a rigorous discursive analysis of an internet discussion forum on the anti‐immigrant website MailOnline consisting of 2,014 unique posts, with a reach of 30 million viewers. Analysis demonstrated that (1) Child refugees were presented as adults, (2) allowing in refugees was presented as a ‘burden’ on taxpayers, (3) the decision was presented as opposed to the public's will (4) this was used as a warrant for leaving the EU. The significant implication of this analysis is that political attempts at associating the refugee crisis with the EU may have been successful in this context.
Government reactions to private substitutes for public goods: Remittances and the crowding-out of public finance
Christian Ambrosius
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Migrant remittances have been praised as an important source of capital for development. However, one aspect that has been relatively neglected so far is: How do governments respond to the inflow of remittances? This research claims that remittances crowd out public finance, because governments enjoy higher approval rates in the presence of remittances without the need to buy electoral support and face lower pressure for increasing public spending when private substitutes exist. Empirical evidence for this hypothesis is provided from subnational public finances in Mexico, using exogenous variation in migrants’ exposure to U.S. labor market conditions as an instrument for remittances. The panel analysis of trends in municipal budgets reveals that state governments responded to the inflow of resources by allocating funds away from municipalities with a stronger presence of remittances. This is true for private remittances as well as for collective remittances, i.e. cases in which migrants and public actors jointly finance public spending via matching grant schemes. The effect is driven by poorer municipalities and is stronger in states governed by the traditional party PRI that has been associated with a long history of clientelistic rule.
Decoding Worker “Reliability”: Modern Agrarian Values and Immigrant Labor on New York Dairy Farms
Kathleen Sexsmith
Rural Sociology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines the reasons offered by New York dairy farmers for hiring undocumented immigrant workers in their milking parlors, and connects those discourses to broader economic and cultural change in U.S. agrarian society. Based on interviews with 25 dairy farmers on 22 farms, this article examines farmers’ assessments of the Amish, white non‐Amish, Puerto Rican, and undocumented Latino labor pool. The analysis shows that farmers consider undocumented immigrants the most “reliable” workforce, and that their reliability stems from their deportability and from their separation from their families, which drives them to work long hours. I argue that farmer discourses about immigrant “reliability” must be understood in the context of economic pressure to adopt a more commercial orientation to dairying, and of modern agrarian values that prize urban middle‐class lifestyles. Ultimately, worker “reliability” is a euphemism for the transnational separation of workers from their families, and one that is operationalized by farmers to justify the pursuit of economic success and more leisure time off the farm.
Immigrant Wages and Recessions: Evidence from Undocumented Mexicans
Rebecca Lessem & Kayuna Nakajima
European Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the impact of recessions on the real wages of undocumented immigrants in the US using data from the Mexican Migration Project. Empirical evidence shows that undocumented immigrants experience larger wage drops during recessions than legal immigrants, suggesting that the frequent renegotiation of contracts leads to greater wage flexibility. Because migration decisions also adjust to these wage changes, the observed equilibrium wages are capturing both lowered aggregate productivity and a smaller supply of migrant workers. To separate these effects, we analyze an equilibrium migration model where native wages are rigid while immigrant wages are flexible. In a counterfactual experiment with a fixed supply of immigrant workers, we see a stronger relationship between aggregate negative productivity shocks and immigrant wages. We also find that the flexibility of immigrant wages could reduce the volatility of high-skilled native employment over the business cycles, but magnifies the volatility of low-skilled native employment.
How Their Laws Affect our Laws: Mechanisms of Immigration Policy Diffusion in the Americas, 1790–2010
David Cook‐Martín & David Scott FitzGerald
Law & Society Review, March 2019, Pages 41-76
Abstract:
Why do laws become similar across countries? Is the adoption of similar laws and policies due to factors operating independently within each country? Do countries develop similar rules in response to similar challenges? Or is the similarity of laws and policies due to the interdependent responses that scholars have referred to as processes of policy convergence, transfer, and diffusion? We draw on an analysis of immigration and nationality laws of 22 countries throughout the Western Hemisphere from 1790 to 2010, and of seven case studies of national and international policymaking, to show that policies are often interdependent, even in the domain of immigration law, which scholars have presumed to be relatively immune to external influence. We argue that specific mechanisms of diffusion explain the rise of racist immigration policies in the Americas, their subsequent decline, and the rise of an anti‐discriminatory norm for policies. Most striking among our findings is that at key junctures after 1940, weaker countries effectively advanced an anti‐discriminatory policy agenda against the desires of world powers. We identify the conditions under which weaker countries were able to reach their goals despite opposition from world powers.