Who we are as a country
Sophisticated collaboration is common among Mexican-heritage US children
Lucía Alcalá, Barbara Rogoff & Angélica López Fraire
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 6 November 2018, Pages 11377-11384
Abstract:
In light of calls for improving people’s skill in collaboration, this paper examines strengths in processes of collaboration of Mexican immigrant children. Sibling pairs (6–10 years old) in California were asked to collaborate in planning the shortest route through a model grocery store. On average, 14 sibling pairs with Mexican Indigenous-heritage backgrounds engaged together collaboratively as an ensemble, making decisions in common and fluidly building on each other’s ideas, more often than 16 middle-class European American sibling pairs, who on average more often divided decision making into a solo activity (often ignoring the other or simply bossing the other). Siblings who spent more time collaborating fluidly as an ensemble in the shared planning task were also more likely to collaborate with initiative at home, according to their mothers, which suggests that family socialization practices may contribute to cultural differences in collaboration.
Restrictive Immigration Law and Birth Outcomes of Immigrant Women
Florencia Torche & Catherine Sirois
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Unauthorized immigration is one of the most contentious policy issues in the United States. In an attempt to curb unauthorized migration, many states have considered restrictive laws intended to make life so difficult for unauthorized immigrants that they would choose to leave the country. Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, enacted in 2010, pioneered these efforts. Using population-level natality data and causal inference methods, we examine the effect of SB1070 on infants exposed before birth in Arizona. Prenatal exposure to the bill resulted in lower birthweight among Latina immigrant women, but not among US-born white, black, or Latina women. The decline in birthweight resulted from exposure to the bill being signed into law, rather than from its (limited) implementation. The findings indicate that the threat of a punitive law, even in the absence of implementation, can have a harmful effect on the birth outcomes of the next generation.
Border Walls
Treb Allen, Cauê de Castro Dobbin & Melanie Morten
NBER Working Paper, November 2018
Abstract:
What are the economic impacts of a border wall between the United States and Mexico? We use confidential data on bilateral flows of primarily unauthorized Mexican workers to the United States to estimate how a substantial expansion of the border wall between the United States and Mexico from 2007 to 2010 affected migration. We then combine these estimates with a general equilibrium spatial model featuring multiple labor types and a flexible underlying geography to quantify the economic impact of the wall expansion. At a construction cost of approximately $7 per person in the United States, we estimate that the border wall expansion harmed Mexican workers and high-skill U.S. workers, but benefited U.S. low-skill workers, who achieved gains equivalent to an increase in per capita income of $0.36. In contrast, a counterfactual policy which instead reduced trade costs between the United States and Mexico by 25% would have resulted in both greater declines in Mexico to United States migration and substantial welfare gains for all workers.
Does Perceiving Discrimination Influence Partisanship Among U.S. Immigrant Minorities? Evidence from Five Experiments
Daniel Hopkins et al.
Journal of Experimental Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Perceived discrimination (PD) is reliably and strongly associated with party identity (PID) among U.S. immigrant minorities such as Latinos and Asian Americans. Yet whether PD causes PID remains unclear, since it is possible that partisanship influences perceptions of discrimination or that other factors drive the observed association. Here, we assess the causal influence of group-level PD on PID using five experiments with Latino and Asian American adults. These experiments varied in important ways: they took place inside and outside the lab, occurred prior to and during Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and tested different manifestations of perceived discrimination and partisan attitudes (total n=2,528). These efforts point to a simple but unexpected conclusion: our experiments and operationalizations do not support the claim that group-targeted PD directly causes PID. These results have important implications for understanding partisanship among immigrants and their co-ethnics and the political incorporation of Latinos and Asian Americans.
Skill Specificity and Attitudes toward Immigration
Sergi Pardos‐Prado & Carla Xena
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Labor market competition theories explaining anti‐immigrant attitudes have received limited or no empirical validation in recent literature. This has led researchers to highlight education and cultural values as the main, if not the sole, drivers of attitudes toward immigration. We present a new labor market competition theory focusing on job availability rather than foreign labor supply. This theory predicts that individuals with low transferable skills in the labor market will articulate a subjective sense of job insecurity and higher hostility toward migrants. Our cross‐classified, longitudinal, and difference‐in‐differences models reveal that skill specificity is a strong driver of anti‐immigrant attitudes, and they suggest that economic competition theories cannot be dismissed. By shifting the attention from supply to demand in the labor market, and from actual to potential competition with migrants, we show that the highly educated are far from immune to anti‐immigrant attitudes.
How Do Restrictions on High-Skilled Immigration Affect Offshoring? Evidence from the H-1B Program
Britta Glennon
Carnegie Mellon University Working Paper, November 2018
Abstract:
The decision to encourage or restrict high-skilled immigration has long been controversial. Advocates argue that high-skilled immigration is critical for firm competitiveness and innovation; critics argue that skilled immigrants displace native workers and drive down wages. The debate, however, has largely overlooked the secondary consequences of restrictions on high-skilled hiring of immigrants: multinational firms faced with decreased access to visas for skilled workers have an offshoring option, namely, hiring the foreign labor they need at their foreign affiliates. This paper documents the impact of restrictive high-skilled immigration policies on the globalization of high-skilled activity by US MNCs. I use a unique matched firm-level dataset of H-1B visas and multinational firm activity and two different identification strategies to examine three key questions about that impact. First, do restrictions on H-1B visas result in increased foreign affiliate activity? Second, how does any impact differ across firms, industries, and countries? Finally, do these restrictions also affect the location of innovative activity? Both strategies yield the same result: that restrictions on H-1B immigration caused increases in foreign affiliate activity at both the intensive (US multinationals employed more people at their foreign affiliates) and the extensive (US multinationals opened more foreign affiliates conducting R&D) margins. The effects are concentrated among highly H-1B-dependent firms and R&D-intensive firms operating in offshorable services sectors. Restrictions also caused increases in foreign R&D and foreign patenting, suggesting that there was also a change in the location of innovative activity.
Is Welfare a Magnet for Migration? Examining Universal Welfare Institutions and Migration Flows
Aaron Ponce
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study extends macro-structural research on international migration flows by going beyond conventional economic, demographic, and geographic explanations. Prior extensions suggest that migrants are drawn to places where welfare benefits are generous. I test the welfare magnet hypothesis while proposing an alternative explanation for migration: the prospect for inclusion. The analysis uses a comprehensive point-to-point migration dataset for a sample of robust welfare states, the universalist countries of Nordic Europe, and similarly positioned destinations representing other welfare types to examine destinations’ commitments to inclusion, humanitarianism, and welfare generosity. Results reveal no evidence for a magnet effect to the most generous welfare states in the world net of other recognized factors, and even suggest a negative influence linked to the region’s high cost of living. Migrants are instead drawn by the promise of social and political inclusion, migrating to destinations where co-ethnics have become full-fledged citizens. Additional evidence points to the role of international commitments to humanitarianism in augmenting flows. Findings integrate insights on contexts of immigrant reception with research on migration flows, thus contributing to a political sociology of immigration and citizenship and opening new avenues for research on the determinants of migration to newer, more distant locations.
The Place Premium: Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers
Michael Clemens, Claudio Montenegro & Lant Pritchett
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Large international differences in the price of labor can be sustained by differences between workers, or by natural and policy barriers to worker mobility. We use migrant selection theory and evidence to place lower bounds on the ad valorem equivalent of labor mobility barriers to the United States, with unique nationally-representative microdata on both U.S. immigrant workers and workers in their 42 home countries. The average price equivalent of migration barriers in this setting, for low-skill males, is greater than $13,700 per worker per year. Natural and policy barriers may each create annual global losses of trillions of dollars.
The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States
Shai Bernstein et al.
Stanford Working Paper, November 2018
Abstract:
We characterize the contribution of immigrants to US innovation, both through their direct productivity as well as through their indirect spillover effects on their native collaborators. To do so, we link patent records to a database containing the first five digits of 160 million of Social Security Numbers (SSN). By combining this part of the SSN together with year of birth, we identify whether individuals are immigrants based on the age at which their Social Security Number is assigned. We find that over the course of their careers, immigrants are more productive than natives, as measured by number of patents, patent citations, and the economic value of these patents. Immigrant inventors are more likely to rely on foreign technologies, to collaborate with foreign inventors, and to be cited in foreign markets, thus contributing to the importation and diffusion of ideas across borders. Using an identification strategy that exploits premature inventor deaths, we find that immigrants collaborators create especially strong positive externalities on the innovation production of natives, while natives create especially large positive externalities on immigrant innovation production, suggesting that combining these different knowledge pools into inventor teams is important for innovation. A simple decomposition suggests that despite immigrants only making up 16% of inventors, they are responsible for 30% of aggregate US innovation since 1976, with their indirect spillover effects accounting for more than twice their direct productivity contribution.
Education and Anti-Immigration Attitudes: Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Reforms across Western Europe
Charlotte Cavaillé & John Marshall
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Low levels of education are a powerful predictor of anti-immigration sentiment. However, there is little consensus on the interpretation of this correlation: is it causal or is it an artifact of selection bias? We address this question by exploiting six major compulsory schooling reforms in five Western European countries — Denmark, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden — that have recently experienced politically influential anti-immigration movements. On average, we find that compelling students to remain in secondary school for at least an additional year decreases anti-immigration attitudes later in life. Instrumental variable estimates demonstrate that, among such compliers, an additional year of secondary schooling substantially reduces the probability of opposing immigration, believing that immigration erodes a country’s quality of life, and feeling close to far-right anti-immigration parties. These results suggest that rising post-war educational attainment has mitigated the rise of anti-immigration movements. We discuss the mechanisms and implications for future research examining anti-immigration sentiment.
It’s security, stupid! Voters’ perceptions of immigrants as a security risk predicted support for Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election
Joshua Wright & Victoria Esses
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We analyzed two datasets to determine the predictive validity of four explanations of support for Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential election: (a) security concerns regarding immigrants, (b) economic concerns regarding immigrants, (c) cultural concerns regarding immigrants, and (d) social dominance orientation. Results of a two‐phase study (N = 354) suggested that perceiving immigrants as a security concern was predictive of increased support for and greater odds of voting for Donald Trump three weeks later. Perceiving immigrants as an economic threat predicted odds of voting for Donald Trump, but only among liberals and there was no evidence of cultural concern or social dominance orientation (SDO) predicting support for Donald Trump or odds of voting for Trump. A follow‐up analysis of the cross‐sectional ANES survey corroborated that security concerns were an important correlate of voting for Trump, but also that SDO was correlated with having previously voted for Donald Trump. While our two‐phase study has the benefit of prediction, the cross‐sectional ANES data does not — “predictors” in these data were collected up to two months post‐election.
Not Just a National Issue: Effect of State‐Level Reception of Immigrants and Population Changes on Intergroup Attitudes of Whites, Latinos, and Asians in the United States
Yuen Huo et al.
Journal of Social Issues, December 2018, Pages 716-736
Abstract:
National discourse about immigration in the United States has become increasingly unwelcoming. In two studies, we examine whether regional‐level (state) information about welcoming (vs. unwelcoming) immigrant policies in the context of either stable or increasing rate of immigration can influence intergroup relations in receiving communities. Among Whites (Study 1), welcoming policy proposals elicited more positive attitudes toward immigrants generally and toward Latinos, the ethnic group most closely associated with immigration in the United States, but only when rate of immigration is constant. In contrast, among Latinos (Study 2), an unwelcoming reception led to more positive attitudes toward immigrants (legal and undocumented) but again only when rate of immigration is constant. Asians’ attitudes (Study 2) toward immigrants were not affected by contextual information about immigration. Together, these findings suggest that local conditions can affect community members’ attitudes toward immigrants and toward specific ethnic groups associated with immigration.
The labor market integration of refugees in the United States: Do entrepreneurs in the network help?
Olivier Dagnelie, Anna Maria Mayda & Jean-François Maystadt
European Economic Review, January 2019, Pages 257-272
Abstract:
We investigate whether entrepreneurs in the network of refugees – from the same country of origin – help refugees enter the labor market by hiring them. We analyze the universe of refugee cases without U.S. ties who were resettled in the United States between 2005 and 2010. We address threats to identification due to refugees sorting into specific labor markets and to strategic placement by resettlement agencies. We find that the probability that refugees are employed 90 days after arrival is positively affected by the number of business owners in their network, but negatively affected by the number of those who are employees. This suggests that network members who are entrepreneurs hire refugees, while network members working as employees compete with them, which is consistent with refugees complementing the former and substituting for the latter.
Immigration and the quality of life in U.S. metropolitan areas
Michael Wallace & Qiong (Miranda) Wu
Social Science Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
The growth and dispersion of immigrant populations in the United States in recent decades has sparked debate about the effects of immigration on the quality of life. Existing research provides evidence of both positive and negative effects, a result that we contend may reflect differing aspects of immigration. In this paper, we conceptualize immigration in urban areas as having two faces: immigrant concentration (the presence of large, concentrated populations of immigrants) and immigrant diversity (the presence of large, diverse populations of immigrants). For 366 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas, we examine how these two faces have influenced four dimensions of quality of life: economic well-being, social well-being, healthy living, and urban mobility. Controlling for appropriate covariates, we find that immigrant concentration tends to have negative effects on urban quality of life, but these effects dissipate when immigrant diversity is considered. On the other hand, immigrant diversity has positive and robust effects on all four dimensions of urban quality of life. We also find little evidence that these findings are an artifact of reverse causality, that is, the influence of quality of life measures on immigrant diversity.
US Immigration Westernizes the Human Gut Microbiome
Pajau Vangay et al.
Cell, 1 November 2018, Pages 962-972
Abstract:
Many US immigrant populations develop metabolic diseases post immigration, but the causes are not well understood. Although the microbiome plays a role in metabolic disease, there have been no studies measuring the effects of US immigration on the gut microbiome. We collected stool, dietary recalls, and anthropometrics from 514 Hmong and Karen individuals living in Thailand and the United States, including first- and second-generation immigrants and 19 Karen individuals sampled before and after immigration, as well as from 36 US-born European American individuals. Using 16S and deep shotgun metagenomic DNA sequencing, we found that migration from a non-Western country to the United States is associated with immediate loss of gut microbiome diversity and function in which US-associated strains and functions displace native strains and functions. These effects increase with duration of US residence and are compounded by obesity and across generations.
Expanding Carceral Markets: Detention Facilities, ICE Contracts, and the Financial Interests of Punitive Immigration Policy
Loren Collingwood, Jason Morin & Stephen Omar El-Khatib
Race and Social Problems, December 2018, Pages 275–292
Abstract:
On the night of November 8, 2016, once election results showed an almost certain presidential victory for Donald Trump, private prison stock values increased. Trump’s harsh anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric, followed by his attempted crackdown on sanctuary cities (and immigrants more generally), had the potential to expand the carceral market to greater shares of undocumented immigrants. We develop a theory of carceral market expansion, arguing that private actors seek to expand carceral markets — for profit — just as in any other market. This paper examines whether private companies, like Core Civic and GEO, that contract with Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) to operate detention facilities exert influence over federal immigration legislation in the 113th and 114th Congresses. Specifically, we examine (1) whether campaign donations made by private prison companies and other contractors to legislators (carceral lobbying hypothesis), and (2) having a privately owned or managed ICE detention facility in a legislator’s district (carceral representation hypothesis) increases the probability that legislators will co-sponsor more harsh immigration legislation in the U.S. states. We find strong support for the carceral representation hypothesis but limited to no support for the carceral lobbying hypothesis. Implications are discussed.
The Impact of Permanent Residency Delays for STEM PhDs: Who leaves and Why
Shulamit Kahn & Megan MacGarvie
NBER Working Paper, October 2018
Abstract:
This paper assesses whether delays in obtaining permanent residency status can explain recent declines in the share of Chinese and Indian PhD graduates from US STEM programs who remain in the US after their studies. We find that newly-binding limits on permanent visas for those from China and India with advanced degrees are significantly associated with declines in stay rates. The stay rate of Chinese graduates declines by 2.4 percentage points for each year of delay, while Indian graduates facing delays of at least 5 1/2 years have a stay rate that is 8.9 percentage points lower. The per-country permanent visa cap affects a large share of STEM PhDs who are disproportionately found in fields of study that have been crucial in stimulating US economic growth yet enroll relatively few natives. Finally, results suggest that the growth of science in countries of origin has an important influence on stay rates, while macroeconomic factors such as GDP per capita affect stay rates only via their impact on science funding. We conclude that per-country limits play a significant role in constraining the supply of highly skilled STEM workers in the US economy.