The natives are restless
Immigration Attitudes and Support for the Welfare State in the American Mass Public
James Garand, Ping Xu & Belinda Davis
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, we explore the relationship between Americans’ attitudes toward immigrants and immigration and their attitudes toward welfare. Using data from the Cumulative American National Election Study from 1992 to 2012, we find ample evidence of the influence of immigration attitudes on both individuals’ attitudes toward welfare recipients and their attitudes toward increased welfare spending. These immigration effects persist even in the face of statistical controls for attitudes toward African Americans and attitudes toward the poor; indeed, in our models, the magnitude of the effects of immigration attitudes surpasses the magnitude of effects of attitudes toward blacks. Further, our findings of immigration effects withstand a range of robustness tests. Our results point to the possible “immigrationalization” of Americans’ welfare attitudes and provide strong evidence that how Americans think about immigration and immigrants is a major factor in how they think about welfare.
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Giovanni Peri & Vasil Yasenov
NBER Working Paper, December 2015
Abstract:
We apply the synthetic control method to re-examine the wage and employment effect of the Mariel Boatlift in Miami. We focus exclusively on workers with no high school degree. They are the group competing more closely in the labor market with the newly arrived. We compare Miami's labor market outcomes with those in a control group of cities chosen using the synthetic control method so as to match Miami's wages and other labor market features in the period 1972 to 1979. Using most samples and different outcomes we find no departure between Miami and its control between 1979 and 1983. Significant noise exists in many samples but we never find significant negative effects especially right after the Boatlift, when they should have been the strongest. We point out that the very different conclusions in a recent reappraisal by George Borjas (2015) stem from the use of a small sub-sample of high school dropouts in the already very small March-CPS sample. That sample is subject to substantial measurement error and no other sample provides the same findings. Being imprecise about the timing of the data and the choice and validation of the control sample further contribute to the impression of an effect from the boatlift in Borjas (2015). We also revisit the non-Boatlift of 1994, considered by Angrist and Krueger (1999) and we do not find consistent deviations of Miami outcomes from the appropriate control that could be mistaken for labor market effects of a Cuban inflow.
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The Wage Impact of the Marielitos: Additional Evidence
George Borjas
NBER Working Paper, January 2016
Abstract:
Cardʼs (1990) study of the Mariel supply shock is an important contribution to the literature that measures the labor market impact of immigration. My recent reappraisal (Borjas, 2015) revealed that even the most cursory reexamination implied that the wage of low-skill (non-Hispanic) working men in Miami declined substantially in the years after Mariel. In the three months since the public release of my paper, there has already been one “re-reappraisal” of the evidence. Peri and Yasenov (2015) make a number of alternative methodological choices that lead them to conclude that Mariel did not have a wage impact. This paper isolates the source of the conflicting results. The main reasons for the divergence are that Peri and Yasenov calculate wage trends in a pooled sample of men and women, but ignore the contaminating effect of increasing female labor force participation. They also include non-Cuban Hispanics in the analysis, but ignore that at least a third of those Hispanics are foreign-born and arrived in the 1980s, further contaminating the calculated wage trend. And, most conspicuously, they include “workers” aged 16-18 in the sample. Because almost all of those “workers” are still enrolled in high school and lack a high school diploma, this very large population of high school students is systematically misclassified as high school dropouts. This fundamental error in data construction contaminates the analysis and helps hide the true effect of the Mariel supply shock.
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Meghan Condon, Alexandra Filindra & Amber Wichowsky
Policy Studies Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across states, there is substantial variation in the degree to which immigrants and their children are offered public assistance. We present a theoretical framework for analyzing the effects of policy decisions about immigrant inclusion. We apply the framework to investigate the effect of the state safety net on educational attainment. We focus on the years following welfare reform in 1996, when states gained considerable autonomy over welfare policy, including decisions about the eligibility of immigrant residents. Leveraging state-level data from before and after reform, we estimate a difference-in-difference model to identify the effect of variation in immigrant inclusivity on educational attainment. We find that when states broaden the inclusivity of the social safety net to immigrants, young Latinos are more likely to graduate from high school. This effect is present beyond the group of Latino residents who receive additional benefits, suggesting that policy decisions about immigrants spill over to broader communities and communicate broader messages about social inclusion to racial and ethnic groups. We find similar patterns among Asian youth, but not among black and non-Hispanic white youth. We conclude that immigrant inclusion has consequences for the life prospects of the growing population of youth in high-immigrant ethnic groups.
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The Effect of Immigration from Mexico on Social Capital in the United States
Morris Levy
International Migration Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Has mass migration from Mexico since the 1980s contributed to a well-documented decline in US social capital? Theories linking ethnic diversity to lower social cohesion and participation (e.g., Putnam 2007, 30, 137) would strongly predict this effect. Yet the impact of immigration in particular, rather than ethno-racial diversity generally, on US social capital has not been examined. Assessing the impact of immigration is important because some have speculated that associations between measures of diversity and social capital found in the United States are a byproduct of the country's distinctively fraught history of black–white relations. This scope condition would greatly limit the applicability of Putnam's thesis. To assess the impact of Mexican immigration, this study leverages a dynamic measure of social capital and an instrumental variables design. The results address an important recent methodological critique of the broader literature and strongly corroborate the hypothesis that immigration erodes social capital.
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“I'm Not Good Enough for Anyone”: Legal Status and the Dating Lives of Undocumented Young Adults
Daniela Pila
Sociological Forum, forthcoming
Abstract:
The impact of legal status on romantic relationships has not been adequately explored in the literature. Based on video and phone interviews with 25 undocumented activists from the ages of 18 to 28 years old, this research examines how legal status affects the romantic relationships of undocumented women and men. The hegemony of traditional dating scripts made it difficult for those without legal status to participate. Gender roles were consistent with stereotypical male and female roles in dating, which often attribute more power and responsibility to men. As such, women experienced a slight advantage because traditional notions of courtship did not require them to provide the resources required for dating, such as money or transportation, which in contrast were commonly expected of the men. In contrast, women noted the difficulties of disclosing their legal status and depending on their partners for everyday activities. Additionally, both men and women faced exclusion that inhibited their dating lives, as a direct result of their legal status. This suggests that the impact of legal status may be salient at all stages of family formation and that undocumented young adults are experiencing a distinct phenomenon compared to their documented and native-born peers.
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Recovering the Counterfactual Wage Distribution with Selective Return Migration
Costanza Biavaschi
Labour Economics, January 2016, Pages 59–80
Abstract:
This paper recovers the distribution of wages for Mexican-born workers living in the U.S. if no return migration of Mexican-born workers occurred. Because migrants self-select in the decision to return, the overarching problem addressed by this study is the use of an estimator that also accounts for selection on unobservables. I find that Mexican returnees are middle- to high-wage earners at all levels of educational attainment. Taking into account self-selection in return migration, wages would be approximately 7% higher at the mean. Owing to positive self-selection, the immigrant-native wage gap would, therefore, partially close if there was no return migration.
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Multiplying Diversity: Family Unification and the Regional Origins of Late-Age US Immigrants
Marta Tienda
International Migration Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use administrative data about new legal permanent residents to show how family unification chain migration changed both the age and regional origin of US immigrants. Between 1981 and 1995, every 100 initiating immigrants from Asia sponsored between 220 and 255 relatives, but from 1996 through 2000, each 100 initiating immigrants from Asia sponsored nearly 400 relatives, with one-in-four ages 50 and above. The family migration multiplier for Latin Americans was boosted by the legalization program: from 1996 to 2000, each of the 100 initiating migrants from Latin America sponsored between 420 and 531 family members, of which 18–21 percent were ages 50 and over.
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The Backyard Politics of Attitudes Toward Immigration
Mara Ostfeld
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using two survey experiments, I reconsider the role that the racialized physical traits and level of assimilation of salient immigrants play in shaping attitudes toward immigration. In the first experiment, a nationwide sample of 767 White, non-Latino adults was exposed to a story about a family of undocumented immigrants living in the Unites States who were at risk of deportation. Subjects were randomly assigned to view a version of the story in which the immigrants were depicted with light skin and stereotypically Eurocentric features, or dark skin and stereotypically Afrocentric features, and their level of assimilation to mainstream American culture was suggested to be high or low. Similar to previous research, the study's results show that assimilation has a direct effect on attitudes toward immigration. Yet in contrast to previous studies, the racialized physical traits proved to be a much more important factor in shaping attitudes toward immigration than previously demonstrated. The role of an immigrant's racialized physical traits was replicated in a second survey experiment of 902 White, non-Latino adults. Overall, the findings shed new light on how media depictions of immigrants are affecting immigration attitudes, as well as the nuanced ways that race continues to shape public opinion in the United States today.
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Immigration to the U.S.: A Problem for the Republicans or the Democrats?
Anna Maria Mayda, Giovanni Peri & Walter Steingress
Georgetown University Working Paper, December 2015
Abstract:
We empirically analyze the impact of immigration to the U.S. on the share of votes to the Republicans and Democrats between 1994 and 2012. Our analysis is based on variation across states and years – using data from the Current Population Survey merged with election data – and addresses the endogeneity of immigrant flows using a novel set of instruments. On average across election types, immigration to the U.S. has a significant and negative impact on the Republican vote share, consistent with the typical view of political analysts in the U.S. This average effect – which is driven by elections in the House – works through two main channels. The impact of immigration on Republican votes in the House is negative when the share of naturalized migrants in the voting population increases. Yet, it can be positive when the share of non-citizen migrants out of the population goes up and the size of migration makes it a salient policy issue in voters' minds. These results are consistent with naturalized migrants being less likely to vote for the Republican Party than native voters and with native voters' political preferences moving towards the Republican Party because of high immigration of non-citizens. This second effect, however, is significant only for very high levels of immigrant presence.
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Gillian Stevens
International Migration Review, Winter 2015, Pages 981–1000
Abstract:
The rapidity with which immigrant children learn the dominant language of their country of residence has important short-term and long-term consequences for their educational achievements and for their future. In this paper I use U.S. Census data to model trajectories of English acquisition among foreign-born children living in Spanish-language households. The results show, as expected, that children's English proficiency increases with length of residence in the United States. However, the results also show a clear trend by age at arrival. The older children are when they arrive in the United States, the less rapid their progress in acquiring proficiency in English.
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Explaining the Mexican-American Health Paradox Using Selectivity Effects
Jose Martinez, Ernesto Aguayo-Tellez & Erick Rangel-Gonzalez
International Migration Review, Winter 2015
Abstract:
While typically socioeconomically disadvantaged, Mexican migrants in the United States tend to have better health outcomes than non-Hispanic whites. This phenomenon is known as the “hispanic health paradox”. Using data from Mexico and the United States, we examine several health outcomes for non-Hispanic whites and Mexicans in the United States and in Mexico and employ Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions to help explain the paradox. We find evidence that selectivity is playing a significant role in the relatively healthy status of Mexican migrants in the United States. More importantly, there is evidence that health selectivity is a complex process and its effects typically do not work the same way for different health conditions and across genders. We also find evidence that some of migrants' health advantages are lost as they spend more time in the United States.
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Adolescent Survival Expectations: Variations by Race, Ethnicity, and Nativity
Tara Warner & Raymond Swisher
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, December 2015, Pages 478-494
Abstract:
Adolescent survival expectations are linked to a range of problem behaviors, poor health, and later socioeconomic disadvantage, yet scholars have not examined how survival expectations are differentially patterned by race, ethnicity, and/or nativity. This is a critical omission given that many risk factors for low survival expectations are themselves stratified by race and ethnicity. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we modeled racial, ethnic, and immigrant group differences in trajectories of adolescent survival expectations and assess whether these differences are accounted for by family, neighborhood, and/or other risk factors (e.g., health care access, substance use, exposure to violence). Findings indicated that most racial, ethnic, and immigrant groups were more pessimistic about their survival than were non-Hispanic whites, with the exception of Cuban youth, who were the most optimistic. Foreign-born Mexican youth had the lowest survival expectations, contrary to expectations from the “healthy-immigrant” hypothesis.
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Tod Hamilton, Tia Palermo & Tiffany Green
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, December 2015, Pages 460-477
Abstract:
A large literature has documented that Hispanic immigrants have a health advantage over their U.S.-born counterparts upon arrival in the United States. Few studies, however, have disentangled the effects of immigrants’ arrival cohort from their tenure of U.S. residence, an omission that could produce imprecise estimates of the degree of health decline experienced by Hispanic immigrants as their U.S. tenure increases. Using data from the 1996-to-2014 waves of the March Current Population Survey, we show that the health (i.e., self-rated health) of Hispanic immigrants varies by both arrival cohort and U.S. tenure for immigrants hailing from most of the primary sending countries/regions of Hispanic immigrants. We also find evidence that acculturation plays an important role in determining the health trajectories of Hispanic immigrants. With respect to self-rated health, however, our findings demonstrate that omitting arrival-cohort measures from health assimilation models may result in overestimates of the degree of downward health assimilation experienced by Hispanic immigrants.
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The Fiscal Cost of Refugee Immigration: The Example of Sweden
Joakim Ruist
Population and Development Review, December 2015, Pages 567–581
Abstract:
The world currently has more refugees and internally displaced persons than it has had since World War II. Yet the readiness of many wealthy countries to provide asylum to these refugees is waning, and a major reason for this is the fiscal burden that would result from larger refugee intakes. To evaluate the size of this fiscal burden, this study estimates the net fiscal redistribution to the total refugee population in Sweden, the country with the largest per capita refugee immigration rate in the Western world since the early 1980s. The total redistribution in 2007 corresponds to 1.0 percent of Swedish GDP in that year. Four-fifths of the redistribution is due to lower public per capita revenues from refugees compared with the total population, and one-fifth to higher per capita public costs.