Legal and illegal immigrants: an analysis of optimal saving behavior

Savings of guest workers as well as of undocumented migrants represent important inflows of foreign exchange for some developing countries. This paper compares the saving behavior of these two types of migrants, assuming that the former are authorized to work abroad for a specific period of time, while the latter can stay until apprehended and deported by the immigration authorities. Due to the risk of deportation, the saving rate of an illegal immigrant is found to be initially above that of a documented migrant. This precautionary saving phenomenon is, however, short-lived. A key finding of the paper is that the total repatriated assets of an illegal migrant are always lower than those of a documented worker, provided that their duration of stay abroad is identical. This is because the undocumented migrant’s saving rate falls over time as her expected lifetime earnings are adjusted upwards every day that she avoids apprehension.     

Undocumented workers in the labor market: an analysis of the earnings of legal and illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States

This paper studies the differences in earnings between Mexican legal and illegal immigrants in the United States. The analysis includes a cross-sectional examination of the wage differences between legal and undocumented workers as well as a longitudinal analysis examining the impact of legalization on the earnings of previously-undocumented workers. It is shown that the average hourly wage rate of male Mexican legal immigrants in the United States was 41.8% higher than that of undocumented workers while female legal immigrants earned 40.8% more. Though illegal immigrants have lower education and English proficiency, and a shorter period of residence in the United States, than legal immigrants, it is shown that differences in the observed characteristics of legal and illegal immigrants explain only 48% of the log-wage gap between male legal and illegal workers and 43% of the gap for women. An analysis of undocumented immigrants legalized after the 1986 U.S. immigration policy reform shows significant wage growth in the four years following legalization. These gains are due mostly to the change in legal status itself, not to changes in the characteristics of immigrants over time. Received: 7 July 1997/Accepted: 16 March 1998     

How Do Tougher Immigration Measures Affect Unauthorized Immigrants?

The recent impetus of tougher immigration-related measures passed at the state level raises concerns about the impact of such measures on the migration experience, trajectory, and future plans of unauthorized immigrants. In a recent and unique survey of Mexican unauthorized immigrants interviewed upon their voluntary return or deportation to Mexico, almost a third reported experiencing difficulties in obtaining social or government services, finding legal assistance, or obtaining health care services. Additionally, half of these unauthorized immigrants reported fearing deportation. When we assess how the enactment of punitive measures against unauthorized immigrants, such as E-Verify mandates, has affected their migration experience, we find no evidence of a statistically significant association between these measures and the difficulties reported by unauthorized immigrants in accessing a variety of services. However, the enactment of these mandates infuses deportation fear, reduces interstate mobility among voluntary returnees during their last migration spell, and helps curb deportees’ intent to return to the United States in the near future.     

Creating illegal immigrants

This paper considers the prospects for successful implementation by governments of guest-worker programs that are based on an intended temporary presence of foreign workers. A means of enforcement of temporary presence is a penalty imposed for overstaying the permissible time period. Employers who are obliged to post bonds for their foreign workers are provided with an incentive to ensure that their workers leave at the end of their contractually specified stay. We consider the consequences of such a bond when foreign workers can leave legal employers for illegal employment. We also investigate the effectiveness of deferred payments to foreign workers as a means of discouraging transition from legal employment to illegal presence. In the final analysis, although the policy intention is a temporary stay, we conclude that if foreign workers do not wish to return home, there is an almost inevitability to the creation of a population of illegal immigrants (whose presence may be subsequently legalized). Received: 28 May 1997/Accepted: 6 July 1998     

The Effects of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals on the Educational Outcomes of Undocumented Students

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is the first large-scale immigration policy to affect undocumented immigrants in the United States in decades and offers eligible undocumented youth temporary relief from deportation as well as renewable work permits. Although DACA has improved the economic conditions and mental health of undocumented immigrants, we do not know how DACA improves the social mobility of undocumented immigrants through its effect on educational attainment. We use administrative data on students attending a large public university to estimate the effect of DACA on undocumented students’ educational outcomes. The data are unique because they accurately identify students’ legal status, account for individual heterogeneity, and allow separate analysis of students attending community colleges versus four-year colleges. Results from difference-in-difference estimates demonstrate that as a temporary work permit program, DACA incentivizes work over educational investments but that the effect of DACA on educational investments depends on how easily colleges accommodate working students. At four-year colleges, DACA induces undocumented students to make binary choices between attending school full-time and dropping out of school to work. At community colleges, undocumented students have the flexibility to reduce course work to accommodate increased work hours. Overall, the results suggest that the precarious and temporary nature of DACA creates barriers to educational investments.     

Public support for Hispanic deportation in the United States: the effects of ethnic prejudice and perceptions of economic competition in a period of economic distress

This paper investigates the effect of ethnic prejudice and perceived economic competition on support for deportation and alternative policy options concerning the handling of undocumented immigrants. Using a national survey conducted in early 2009, data are analysed using bivariate and multinomial regression techniques. Ethnic prejudice and perceived economic competition were found to be significantly related to support for deportation in the face of alternative options, controlling for the effects of age, sex, employment status, nativity, race, party identification, and education. Furthermore, majority support for deportation was found among conservatives, moderates, Republicans, and Independents. Even among liberals and Democrats, substantial numbers supported deportation. During the recent economic recession, perceived economic competition and ethnic prejudice were dominant influences on deportation preferences, and deportation appears to have become a mainstream policy option. However, we speculate that deportation preferences are relatively shallow and unstable owing partly to the dependence of immigration public opinion on economic cycles, and, ultimately, the unfeasibility of deportation as a policy option.     

Foreign and undocumented workers in California agriculture

In November 1986, the United States Congress passed the most sweeping reform of federal immigration laws in more than two decades. The major objective of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 is to curtail the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States. But the Act contains controversial provisions to assure agricultural producers who rely most heavily on illegal immigrants to harvest perishable crops that they will not suffer unfairly from changes in U.S. immigration laws. These special provisions for agriculture rest on two assumptions that heretofore have received little attention from researchers: (1) that agriculture now relies heavily on undocumented workers to harvest perishable crops, and (2) that growers hire undocumented labor because legal farmworkers are not available to work at wages growers can afford to pay. This paper presents preliminary findings from a study of the role of undocumented workers in California agriculture. The findings cast some doubt on the assumptions that undocumented workers are employed mostly in harvesting perishable crops and that growers hire illegal aliens because legal workers are not available. The analysis focuses on California because one-half of all undocumented immigrants in the United States are believed to live in this state.     

Undocumented Mexican immigrants and the earnings of other workers in the United States

This article examines the effects of undocumented Mexican immigrants on the earnings of other workers in geographical labor markets in the Southwest. The number of undocumented Mexicans included in the 1980 census in southwestern SMSAs is estimated. We then estimate the parameters of three specifications of a generalized Leontief production function with various demographic groups as substitutable factors. The statistically significant effects of undocumented Mexicans on the earnings of other groups are positive, but of slight magnitude. Legal immigrants' effects on native white earnings, however, are small and negative. The results are consistent with the possibility that undocumented Mexican immigrants' jobs complement those of other workers. The implications for public policy concerns about the effects of illegal Mexican immigration are discussed.     

The U.S. 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act and undocumented migration to the United States

One of the major goals of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) is to reduce the number of undocumented immigrants coming to and residing in the United States. This goal is pursued by allocating increased resources to Border Patrol enforcement, imposing penalties on employers for hiring undocumented workers, and offering to legalize the undocumented population that has resided in the country for a substantial period of time. This paper evaluates the impact of IRCA on the flow of undocumented migrants across the U.S.-Mexican border by analyzing a monthly time series of Border Patrol apprehensions from January 1977 to September 1988 within the context of a multivariate statistical model. The model provides a good fit to the data (R² = 0.94), and our results indicate that INS resources, Mexican population growth, comparative economic conditions on both sides of the border, and seasonal factors related to the agricultural planting and harvesting cycle are all determinants of border apprehensions and, by implication, of the flow of undocumented migrants to the United States. IRCA's impacts on the number of ‘apprehensions averted’ operate mainly through changes in INS effort, the SAWs agricultural legalization program, and other IRCA-related factors. Our analysis concludes that the effects of IRCA, though perhaps smaller than sometimes alleged, were associated with a cumulative net reduction in linewatch apprehensions of nearly 700,000 in the 23-month period following enactment of the law. The associated reduction over the same period in the number of illegal border crossings may be as high as 2 million.     

Immigration to the U.S.: the unfinished story

Annual totals of new immigrants and refugees in the US may now be up to the record highs of over a million immigrants counted in 6 years between 1905 and 1914. Since 1979, legal immigrants have averaged 566,000 a year (570,009 in 1985), newly arrived refugees and asylees approved have averaged 135,000, and the "settled" illegal immigrant population is growing by up to 1/2 million a year, according to some estimates. 1/2 of illegal immigrants are persons who entered the US legally but then overstayed the terms of temporary visas. Immigration and Naturalization Service apprehensions of illegal aliens, projected at a record 1.8 million for fiscal year 1986, indicate a sharp increase in illegal border crossers, driven by Mexico's and Central America's mounting population and economic pressures and lured by the prospect of jobs with employers who through a loophole in US immigration law can hire illegal aliens without penalty. The Census Bureau estimates that net immigration now accounts for 28% of US population growth and will account for all growth by the 2030's if fertility stays at the current low 1.8 births per woman. Public opinion strongly favors crubs on illegal immigration and legalization of illegal aliens long resident in the US, and in 1986 Congress enacted legislation to reduce illegal immigration to the US. Asians and Latin Americans now make up over 80% of legal immigrants and Latin Americans comprised 77% of illegal immigrants counted in the 1980 census. Asians far outstrip Latin American immigrants in education, occupational status, and income and might be expected to assimilate in the same manner as earlier immigrant group did. Hispanic immigrants so far appear to favor cultural pluralism, maintaining their own culture and the Spanish language. Research in California indicates that recent Hispanic immigrants (legal and illegal) have helped preserve low-wage industries and agriculture. Illegal immigrants appear to draw more on public health and education services than they pay back in taxes. With or without immigration reform, population and economic pressures in Mexico and the Caribbean Basin ensure that the numbers of people seeking to enter the US are only likely to increase.     

What is the annual net flow of undocumented mexican immigrants to the united states?

Senior government officials have claimed that in recent years an average of 1.4 million illegal aliens have entered the United States annually without apprehension. This conjectural figure does not take into account the fact that the net flow of immigrants is always less than the gross flow. In this paper, seven estimates are made concerning the net flow of undocumented Mexican immigrants to the United States in the period 1970--1975. These estimates are based on the growth of the population of Mexican origin according to the Current Population Survey. According to these estimates the annual net flow ranged from 82,300 to 232,400 persons.     

世界人口移民新态势

20世纪中叶以来 ,世界人口移民逐渐发生变化。发展中国家移民人数明显增加 ,其中越境难民和非法入境者占主流 ,知识型移民逐年提高。而经济发达国家的澳大利亚和德国人口外迁移民也令人关注。典型的移民国家以色列仍在吸引世界各地的犹太人回到自己的祖国     

Return migration of foreign students and non-resident tuition fees

This paper challenges the notion that optimal non-resident tuition fees should necessarily be raised if the return rate of foreign students after graduation increases. The analysis of a host country’s optimal pricing behavior therefore incorporates a specific student migration model. Students usually are aware of the fact that they might return to their home countries after being educated abroad, even if they initially intended to stay on in the host country. With rational expectations, a change in students’ perceptions of the return probability after graduation can affect their first-round decisions whether to study abroad. The optimal adjustment of non-resident tuition fees in the host country has to take this behavioral response into account. Under certain conditions, the behavioral effect is dominant, and a decline in stay rates of students actually requires tuition fee cuts.     

Determinants of Well-being Among Legal and Illegal Immigrants: Evidence from South Italy

The pursuit of happiness and life satisfaction mobilises individuals to create a dynamic, unique, everyday reality for themselves. The literature has placed particular emphasis on the study of immigrants on the basis that migration is triggered by discrepancies between prior expectations and realisations post-migration. However, the relationship between happiness and illegal migration has received little attention. This study contributes to the current literature by analysing a sample of both illegal and legal immigrants to test the established socio-economic drivers of well-being for each group. Additionally, for the first time, the subjective well-being (SWB) of the respondents is measured in a continuous scale utilising the Visual Analogue Scale technique. Our findings demonstrate that illegal immigrants not only experience greater increases in SWB, but they also report higher levels. Finally, the income effect is positively correlated (although weak) with SWB for illegal immigrants only and family size is positively correlated with greater levels of SWB for their legal counterparts.     

Empirical characteristics of legal and illegal immigrants in the USA

We combine the New Immigrant Survey (NIS), which contains information on US legal immigrants, with the American Community Survey (ACS), which contains information on legal and illegal immigrants to the USA. Using an econometric methodology proposed by Lancaster and Imbens (J Econ 71:145–160, 1996) we compute the probability for each observation in the ACS data to refer to an illegal immigrant, conditional on observed characteristics. These results are novel, since no other work has quantified the characteristics of illegal immigrants from a random sample representative of the population. Using these conditional probability weights on the ACS data, we are able to uncover some interesting facts on illegal immigrants. We find that, while illegal immigrants suffer a large wage penalty compared to legal immigrants at all education levels, the penalty decreases with education. We also find that the total fertility rate among illegal immigrant women is significantly higher than that among legal ones, in particular for middle and higher educated women. Looking at the sector of activity, we document that the sectors attracting most illegal immigrants are constructions and agriculture. We also generate empirical distributions for state of residence, country of origin, age, sex, and number of legal and illegal immigrants. Our forecasts for the aggregate distribution of legal and illegal characteristics match imputations by the Department of Homeland Security.     

In-State College Tuition Policies for Undocumented Immigrants: Implications for High School Enrollment Among Non-citizen Mexican Youth

This paper examines the secondary effects of policies that extend or deny in-state tuition to children of undocumented immigrants. Drawing upon repeated cross-sections of 15–17-year-olds in the Current Population Survey across 1997–2010, we assess changes in high school enrollment rates among Mexican-born non-citizen youth—a proxy for the undocumented youth population. We find that Mexican-born non-citizen youth living in states that deny in-state tuition benefits to undocumented youth are 49 % less likely to be enrolled in school than their peers living in states with no explicit policy. Conversely, Mexican-born non-citizen youth living in states that grant in-state tuition benefits to undocumented youth are 65 % more likely to be enrolled in school than their peers living in states with no explicit policy. The enactment of these policies is unrelated to changes in school enrollment among naturalized citizens. Our findings lend support to the proposition that that the implementation of in-state tuition policies sends signals to immigrant youth about their future educational possibilities in the long-term, which in turn influences the extent to which they engage in school in the short-term.     

Playing Cat and Mouse at the U.S.-Mexican Border

Border control and apprehension activity represents a major element of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Does apprehending an undocumented migrant deter remigration? If it does not, does it change future migration behavior? I explore these questions by testing hypotheses about the effects of apprehension on the actual and desired length of stay in the United States and on the frequency of migration for undocumented Mexican male migrants. Results suggest that INS policy may well be backfiring. Migrants stay in the United States longer on non-apprehended trips and stay in Mexico for shorter spells between trips to compensate for the cost of a past apprehension.     

An analysis of public opinion toward undocumented immigration

Public opinion toward illegal migration to the United States varies considerably across different segments of the population, but little is known about why some individuals hold more liberal attitudes than others. Several hypotheses are scattered throughout the research literature, but they have not been brought together in one place and tested using a common data set. Nor have the limited tests been satisfactory from a methodological standpoint. Instead of using multiple regression, typically analysts have relied on cross-tabulations of the data. This paper tests five hypotheses about attitudes toward illegal immigration and undocumented migrants using public opinion data from southern California. Only weak support is found for a labor market competition hypothesis. There is firmer evidence for hypotheses relating to cultural affinity between respondents and undocumented migrants and to the role of education. Respondents' evaluations of tangible costs and benefits to themselves also influence their assessments of illegal immigration. Finally, the results of this analysis provide additional support for a symbolic politics model of opinion formation when the model is extended to the issue of undocumented migration to the United States.     

Do amnesty programs reduce undocumented immigration? Evidence from Irca

This article examines whether mass legalization programs reduce future undocumented immigration. We focus on the effects of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted amnesty to nearly 2.7 million undocumented immigrants. We report that apprehensions of persons attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally declined immediately following passage of the law but returned to normal levels during the period when undocumented immigrants could file for amnesty and the years thereafter. Our findings suggest that the amnesty program did not change long-term patterns of undocumented immigration from Mexico.     

Undocumented youth in limbo: the impact of America’s immigration enforcement policy on juvenile deportations

The surge in unaccompanied minor crossings between 2011 and 2014 led to an overwhelming increase in the number of juvenile deportation proceedings, which coincided with a peak in intensified immigration enforcement at the state and local levels. Using data on juvenile deportation proceedings, we examine how tougher immigration enforcement might have influenced judicial rulings on these cases and, ultimately, these youths’ ability to stay in the country. We find that the average increase in immigration enforcement over that period is associated with a 15% reduction in the share of juvenile cases ending with permission to stay. The result underscores the importance of the immigration policy context in which courts operate on their rulings, even if immigration law is within the jurisdiction of the Federal government. Given the gravity of the circumstances these children are escaping, further attention to how the piecemeal approach to immigration enforcement might impact the protection of their humanitarian rights is warranted.