Immigration and Immigration Policies
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)
- Chair: Giovanni Peri, University of California-Davis
U.S. Immigration and Labor Market Effects of the Mexican Drug War
Abstract
The Mexican Drug War erupted in 2007 following the election of Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN) and a subsequent crackdown on several large drug cartels. Homicides in Mexico increased from about 10,000 in 2007 to over 25,000 in the 2011 and over 35,000 in 2019. The increase in homicides led to an increase in migration from affected municipios in Mexico to the United States. We estimate the effect of Mexican Drug War migrants, most of whom are undocumented, on wages and employment in U.S. labor markets. Our empirical strategy compares U.S. counties connected by the pre-existing migration network to drug violence driven by close elections in Mexican municipalities. In response to the rise in drug violence in Mexico, native-born U.S. workers' employment rates increase, and unemployment rates fall, while wages do not change. Long-run adjustment to higher inflows takes place over a decade.The Effect of Low-Skill Immigration Restrictions on U.S. Firms and Workers: Evidence from a Randomized Lottery
Abstract
U.S. firms face a binding quota on visas to employ foreign workers in low-skill occupations outside of agriculture. The government allocates this quota to firms in part through a randomized lottery. We evaluate the marginal impact of the quota on firms entering this lottery in 2021 and 2022, using a novel survey and pre-analysis plan. Firms exogenously authorized to employ more immigrants in low-skill jobs significantly increase production (elasticity 0.20--0.22), investment (1.5--2.1), and the rate of profit (0.15). Because the foreign-native elasticity of substitution in production is very low in the policy-relevant occupations (0.8--2.2), the effect on native employment is zero or positive overall, and positive in rural areas. Forensic analysis suggests similarly low substitutability of black-market labor.Externalities of U.S. Immigration Enforcement Policies: Evidence from El Salvador
Abstract
Since the early 2000s, the U.S. deported more than 5 million migrants, mainly to countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. We study the unintended outcomes of these policies in migrant countries of origin. El Salvador provides a particularly relevant case to explore the repercussions of deportation policies: Over the period 2000 to 2020, the number of deportees received by El Salvador are equivalent to almost 5% of its current population stock (US Department of Homeland Security Various Years). Our identification strategy exploits both the temporal and geographic variation in the roll-out of two policies that had the explicit goal of facilitating the deportation of undocumented migrants: 287(g) agreements and Secure Communities. We match the timing and county of implementation of the immigration enforcement policies in the U.S. with Salvadoran consular data on migration corridors that allows us to connect municipalities of origin and counties of residence in a shift-share research design. We then use geographic variation in annual survey data to explore coping strategies in response to migrant exposure to deportation threats for household level variables over the period 2003 to 2020. Preliminary results show that immigration enforcement policies in the U.S. negatively impacted the number of international migrants in El Salvador, and consequently, affect the probability of receiving remittances and the capacity of food expenditure at the household level. We also find changes in the intensive margin of employment, in which these policies lead to more working hours.Discussant(s)
Mark Borgschulte
,
University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and IZA
Tamar (Tamri) Matiashvili
,
Stanford University
Ernesto Tiburcio
,
University of California-Berkeley
Emir Murathanoglu
,
Oberlin College
JEL Classifications
- J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers