| Abstract: | Portions of the United States near the Mexican border are experiencing massive inflows of both legal and illegal migrants of Mexican origin. The resultant concentration of low skill labor in these areas of the southwestern states supposedly has led to an excess supply of labor and subsequent depressed labor market conditions, particularly for blue collar workers and Mexican-American nationals. This paper analyzes the degree to which the labor market in this area is depressed. The results presented here tend to verify hypotheses suggested by several other authors but indicate that the magnitude of the problem as reflected by low wages along the border is much less severe than generally believed. The importance of this study is that it measures a phenomenon that heretofore has been accepted with very little empirical verification. |
