Immigration and Economics
Politicized Places: Explaining Where and When Immigrants Provoke Local Opposition
Daniel Hopkins
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
In ethnic and racial terms, America is growing rapidly more diverse. Yet attempts to extend racial threat hypotheses to today's immigrants have generated inconsistent results. This article develops the politicized places hypothesis, an alternative that focuses on how national and local conditions interact to construe immigrants as threatening. Hostile political reactions to neighboring immigrants are most likely when communities undergo sudden influxes of immigrants and when salient national rhetoric reinforces the threat. Data from several sources, including twelve geocoded surveys from 1992 to 2009, provide consistent support for this approach. Time-series cross-sectional and panel data allow the analysis to exploit exogenous shifts in salient national issues such as the September 11 attacks, reducing the problem of residential self-selection and other threats to validity. The article also tests the hypothesis using new data on local anti-immigrant policies. By highlighting the interaction of local and national conditions, the politicized places hypothesis can explain both individual attitudes and local political outcomes.
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Immigration and the Economic Status of African-American Men
George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger & Gordon Hanson
Economica, April 2010, Pages 255-282
Abstract:
The employment rate of black men, and particularly of low-skilled black men, fell precipitously between 1960 and 2000. At the same time, their incarceration rate rose. This paper examines the relation between immigration and these trends in employment and incarceration. Using data from the 1960-2000 US censuses, we find that a 10% immigration-induced increase in the supply of workers in a particular skill group reduced the black wage of that group by 2.5%, lowered the employment rate by 5.9 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate by 1.3 percentage points.
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The Consequences of Multiracial Contexts on Public Attitudes toward Immigration
Shang Ha
Political Research Quarterly, March 2010, Pages 29-42
Abstract:
This study examines how racial contexts relate to Americans' opinion toward immigration. Survey data analysis reveals that racial surroundings correspond to public attitudes differently, depending on race and geographic unit. For non-Hispanic white Americans, proximity to Asians correlates with positive attitudes toward immigrants, whereas those living with Hispanics are more likely to harbor negative stereotypes. Conversely, African Americans living with Asians are more likely to be prejudiced against immigrants. Furthermore, the positive effects of racial contexts are more salient in the neighborhoods than in larger areas. These findings suggest the significance of racial integration in alleviating interethnic tension.
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The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and US Ethnic Invention
William Kerr & William Lincoln
NBER Working Paper, February 2010
Abstract:
This study evaluates the impact of high-skilled immigrants on US technology formation. We use reduced-form specifications that exploit large changes in the H-1B visa program. Higher H-1B admissions increase immigrant science and engineering (SE) employment and patenting by inventors with Indian and Chinese names in cities and firms dependent upon the program relative to their peers. Most specifications find limited effects for native SE employment or patenting. We are able to rule out displacement effects, and small crowding-in effects may exist. Total SE employment and invention increases with higher admissions primarily through direct contributions of immigrants.
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Sunil Mithas & Henry Lucas
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The use of H-1B and other work visas to hire foreign information technology (IT) professionals in the United States has attracted significant controversy and policy debates. On one hand, hiring high-skill foreign IT professionals on work visas can be advantageous for U.S. firms and the overall economy. On the other hand, high-skill immigration can adversely impact the wages of foreign and American IT professionals. This study uses data on skills and compensation of more than 50,000 IT professionals in the U.S. over the period 2000-2005 to study patterns in compensation of foreign and American IT professionals to inform these debates. Contrary to the popular belief that foreign workers are a cheap source of labor for U.S. firms, we find that after controlling for their human capital attributes, foreign IT professionals (those without a U.S. citizenship and those with H-1B or other work visas) earn a salary premium when compared with IT professionals with U.S. citizenship. The salary premiums for non-U.S. citizens and for those on work visas fluctuate in response to supply shocks created by the annual caps on new H-1B visas. Setting lower and fully utilized annual caps results in higher salary premiums for non-U.S. citizens and those with a work visa. We discuss implications of this study for crafting informed visa and immigration related policies by the U.S. government, for staffing practices of firms and for human capital investments by IT professionals.
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Scott Tainsky & Jason Winfree
Social Science Quarterly, March 2010, Pages 117-128
Objectives: This article tests the presence of demand-driven discrimination attributable to foreign-born players in Major League Baseball (MLB). We quantify the change in demand at MLB games given the number of foreign players on an MLB team. We further measure how matching market population demographics and team demographics affects demand.
Methods: We use regression analysis to estimate the effect on attendance of a change in the number of foreign players on a team. We then use these estimates to find the change in revenue for the team.
Results: The results show that the effect evolves over time. At the outset of the sample (1985), the net effect of an additional foreign-born player was a decrease in ticket demand. This effect diminished steadily until 1992, when the net effect became positive, peaking in 2000, and then slightly decreasing until the end of the sample (2005). The matching of team and population demographics was not found to be significant.
Conclusions: We discuss the implications of this result on league policy decisions.
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Skilled Immigration and Innovation: Evidence from Enrollment Fluctuations in U.S. Doctoral Programs
Keith Maskus, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak & Eric Stuen
University of Colorado Working Paper, February 2010
Abstract:
We study the contribution of foreign science and engineering talent to the creation of new knowledge in the U.S. economy using panel data on 2300 science and engineering (S&E) departments at 100 large American universities from 1973 to 1998. We use macroeconomic shocks and policy changes in source countries that differentially affect enrollments across fields and universities to isolate exogenous variation in the supply of students at specific departments. Both foreign and domestic graduate students are central inputs into knowledge creation, and the marginal foreign student contributes more to the production of scientific publications and citations. A 10% decrease in the foreign share of doctoral students lowers S&E research output at U.S. universities by 5-6%. A theoretical model of university admissions and scholarships helps us infer the productivity effects of student quality, and econometric results indicate that any visa restrictions limiting entry of high-quality foreign students is most costly for U.S. innovation. Increased diversity appears to be the primary mechanism by which foreign students improve research outcomes. The impact of more restrictive immigration policies depends on how they affect the quality margin and diversity of incoming foreigners.
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Growing Diversity among America's Children and Youth: Spatial and Temporal Dimensions
Kenneth Johnson & Daniel Lichter
Population and Development Review, March 2010, Pages 151-176
Abstract:
This study documents the changing racial and ethnic mix of America's children. Specifically, we focus on the unusually rapid shifts in the composition and changing spatial distribution of America's young people between 2000 and 2008. Minorities grew to 43 percent of all children and youth, up from 38.5 percent only eight years earlier. In 1990, this figure stood at 33 percent. Among 0-4-year-olds, 47 percent of all children were minority in 2008. Changes in racial and ethnic composition are driven by two powerful demographic forces. The first is the rapid increase since 2000 in the number of minority children - with Hispanics accounting for 80 percent of the growth. The second is the absolute decline in the number of non-Hispanic white children and youth. The growth of minority children and racial diversity is distributed unevenly over geographical space. Over 500 (or roughly 1 in 6) counties now have majority-minority youth populations. Broad geographic areas of America nevertheless remain mono-racial, where only small shares of minorities live.
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Phillip Connor
Ethnic and Racial Studies, March 2010, Pages 376-403
Abstract:
Among migration scholars, immigrant religiosity has become an important variable in understanding immigrant incorporation into the new society, but less studied are determinants of varying immigrant religious outcomes. Using a subsample of immigrant Muslims within the European Social Survey (2002, 2004, 2006), contexts of immigrant receptivity as less or more welcoming are tested on immigrant Muslim religious outcomes using multi-level modelling. Results confirm the hypothesis that less welcoming immigrant contexts are associated with higher religious outcomes among Muslim immigrants in comparison to the host region's religiosity.
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Neda Maghbouleh
Journal of Intercultural Studies, April 2010, Pages 199-218
Abstract:
Thirty years after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, nearly 1 million Iranians are estimated to reside in the USA. As a result of this migration, a 'second generation' has been born in exile and has come of age entirely in US institutional spaces such as schools and universities. Yet, very little scholarship addresses this new cohort of young adults as they move beyond their diasporic childhood homes and into adulthood. This paper argues that through an appreciation of pre-Revolution Iranian pop music, second-generation Iranians in the USA actively employ 'inherited nostalgia' to make sense of their identities in university settings in which ethnicity, identity and claims to cultural authenticity are increasingly prominent. Drawing from interviews, focus groups and participant observation with an Iranian-American student group at a public university in Southern California, this paper also extends our understanding of the ways in which cultural products such as ethnic pop music are brought into social practice by second-generation immigrants in diaspora. Pre-Revolution Iranian pop music provides this cohort with a discursive repertoire to share, teach and tame the histories and present circumstances of Iran.
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Ethnic minority immigrants and their children in Britain
Christian Dustmann & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos
Oxford Economic Papers, April 2010, Pages 209-233
Abstract:
This paper investigates educational attainment and economic performance of ethnic minority immigrants and their children in Britain, in comparison to white British born. We find that ethnic minority immigrants and their children are on average better educated in comparison to their British born white peers. Educational attainment of British born minorities is far higher than that of their parent generation, and supersedes that of their white native born peers. Despite this, British born ethnic minorities exhibit on average lower employment probabilities. Their mean wages appear to be slightly higher than those of their white native born peers, but this is due to their higher educational attainment and their concentration in Greater London. Mean wages would be considerably lower for the same characteristics and the same regional allocation. Differences in wage offers do not explain employment differences of British born ethnic minorities. We discuss possible alternative explanations.
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The Returns to English-Language Skills in India
Mehtabul Azam, Aimee Chin & Nishith Prakash
World Bank Working Paper, March 2010
Abstract:
India's colonial legacy and linguistic diversity give English an important role in its economy, and this role has expanded due to globalization in recent decades. It is widely believed that there are sizable economic returns to English-language skills in India, but the extent of these returns is unknown due to lack of a microdata set containing measures of both earnings and English ability. In this paper, we use a newly available data set - the India Human Development Survey, 2005 - to quantify the effects of English-speaking ability on wages. We find that being fluent in English (compared to not speaking any English) increases hourly wages of men by 34%, which is as much as the return to completing secondary school and half as much as the return to completing a Bachelor's degree. Being able to speak a little English significantly increases male hourly wages 13%. There is considerable heterogeneity in returns to English. More experienced and more educated workers receive higher returns to English. The complementarity between English skills and education appears to have strengthened over time. Only the more educated among young workers earn a premium for English skill, whereas older workers across all education groups do.
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Language nuances, trust and economic growth
Alberto Chong, Jorge Guillen & Vanessa Rios
Public Choice, April 2010, Pages 191-208
Abstract:
Language serves two key functions. It enables communication between agents, which allows the set-up and functioning of formal and informal institutions. It also serves a less obvious function, as it provides a reassuring quality more closely related with issues linked with trust, social capital, and cultural identification. While research on the role of language as a learning process is widespread, there is no evidence on the role of language as a signal of cultural affinity. We pursue this latter avenue of research and show that subtle language affinity is positively linked with change in earnings when using English-speaking data for cities in the Golden Horseshoe area in Southern Ontario during the period 1991 to 2001. The results are robust to changes in specification, and a broad number of empirical tests.