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Legislative action on issues of immigration emerged prominently across and within US states throughout the 2000s. The emerging literature on this topic demonstrates the political motivations driving anti-immigrant laws that negatively impact the mobility of Hispanic/Latino and Foreign-born populations across US states. Considerable research identifies the political mechanisms driving restrictive state-level immigration policies. Despite the growth of this scholarly work, the impact of these laws within states requires further study. This paper broadens the approach to the study of restrictive state-level omnibus immigration laws (OILs) using a rich dataset to uncover the effects of these laws on compositional change for undocumented, foreign-born, and Hispanic/Latino populations from 2005 to 2017. Using a quasi-experimental design, I show that by passing omnibus immigration laws, states shape demographic patterns of Foreign-born populations. Specifically, I find that states that pass omnibus immigration laws experience a decrease in undocumented and Foreign-born populations relative to states that did not pass similar laws. Effects are estimated each year after the passage of OILs, providing additional insight into the temporal impact of omnibus immigration laws on the settlement patterns of these groups. I conclude by discussing the theoretical implications of the multiple interior immigration law and policies, specifically at the state level, and their salience in shaping population dynamics across the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of literature documents the importance of child support for children’s wellbeing, though little is known about the child support behaviors of mixed-status families, a large and rapidly growing population in the United States. In this paper, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to investigate the impact of citizenship status on formal and informal child support transfers among a nationally representative sample of parents who have citizen children. Probit regression models and propensity score matching (PSM) estimators show that mixed-status families are significantly less likely to have child support orders and child support receipt compared to their citizen counterparts. We found that mothers’ knowledge of the child support system increases the probability of establishing paternity. However, cultural differences in knowledge of and perception about the U.S. child support system between mixed-status families and citizen families do not have an impact on the probability of getting a child support order, child support receipt, or in-kind child support. Rather, institutional factors such as collaborations between welfare agencies and child support enforcement agencies as well as state child support enforcement efforts have a significant impact on formal child support outcomes. The results are robust against different model specifications, measure constructions, and use of datasets. These findings have important policy implications for policy makers and researchers interested in reducing child poverty in complex family structures and underscore the need to revisit child support policies for mixed-status families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The safety net that immigrants face today differs significantly from the immediate post-Welfare Reform era in terms of eligibility and economic context. To inform debates on immigrant access to the safety net, this paper examines implications of the 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act, which restored food stamp eligibility to nearly two-thirds of immigrants who lost eligibility under Welfare Reform. Using data from the 1995–2013 Current Population Survey and a difference-in-difference design, I examine how restoration efforts have influenced food stamp participation and food insecurity rates among low-income Mexican immigrant households with children. I then examine trends in food stamp receipt across policy and economic changes since Welfare Reform. Overall, results suggest that immigrant restoration efforts have reversed some but not all of the negative consequences of Welfare Reform and that immigrant households' use of food stamps has increased, particularly in the wake of the Great Recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several factors influenced the composition of migrants in the early 20th century, including World War I, the Literacy Act of 1917, and the implementation of strict immigration quotas. This paper examines whether the United States' first immigration quota, established under the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, affected migrant selection. The Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 severely capped the number of admittable migrants by nationality. Canadian migrants, or any migrants who resided in Canada for five consecutive years, were unrestricted by the quota and could freely migrate to the U.S. Using transcribed ship records from states bordering Canada (specifically New York, Alaska, and Washington), I compare the skills of restricted migrants to the skills of unrestricted Canadian migrants, before and after establishment of the 1921 quota. Difference-in-differences estimates indicate that the quota resulted in migrants of higher skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the extent to which unskilled internal migrants in the United States were motivated by the possibility of upward occupational mobility. Drawing on the literature on contemporary migrant selection and sorting, I argue that workers with greater potential for occupational upgrading may have selected themselves out of counties with low skill premiums and sorted themselves into counties with high skill premiums. Using linked data from the U.S. Census and county-level wage data, I present results consistent with this argument, with a focus on shorter distance movers. Conditioning on migrant status, I find that unskilled migrants who moved to places with high skill premiums were most likely to upgrade. 1 offer some evidence that migrant sorting explains much of this result. My results imply that previous research focusing solely on wage gains provides an incomplete picture of the factors motivating east-west migration in nineteenth century America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preschool programs in the United States have expanded dramatically in recent decades. There has been significant scholarly attention to the implications of this for inequalities in children's educational outcomes, but less attention to the implications for the work-family lives of parents. Drawing on data from 2001 to 2017 American Community Surveys, this paper examines how children's preschool enrollment is associated with maternal employment, with particular attention to differences by mothers' race, ethnicity, and nativity. Findings document unequal access to preschool programs across groups but also different patterns of association between children's preschool enrollment and maternal employment. Immigrant mothers are doubly disadvantaged compared to their U.S.-born counterparts: Children are less likely to attend preschool, and when they do attend, this does little to facilitate maternal employment. The paper's conclusion addresses limitations of existing preschool programs for work-family reconciliation, but also emphasizes that limitations are more severe for some families than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Studies of immigrant adaptation in the United States emphasize the importance of duration of residence, language use, location of schooling and other factors related to the migration process in determining outcomes for immigrants. Research also points to the variability of socioeconomic mobility among immigrants and their descendants across receiving contexts encountered in the United States. This paper extends this model to young children and examines how the linguistic environment of the family and the community interact to produce differential developmental outcomes. The analyses rely on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) and 2000 US Census. Children’s cognitive scores vary considerably by mothers’ nativity and household linguistic isolation; a result that is largely influenced by the greater likelihood of living in poverty for children in linguistically isolated homes. The level of linguistic isolation in the community is also associated with cognitive scores but the greatest variation in scores across communities occurs among children of US born mothers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination in employment on the basis of color is prohibited, and color is a protected basis independent from race. Using data from the spouses of the main respondents to the New Immigrant Survey 2003, this paper shows that immigrants with the lightest skin color earn on average 16–23% more than comparable immigrants with the darkest skin color. These estimates control for years of legal permanent residence in the US, education, English language proficiency, occupation in source country, Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, race, country of birth, as well as for extensive current labor market characteristics that may be themselves influenced by discrimination. Furthermore, the skin color penalty does not diminish over time. These results are consistent with persistent skin color discrimination affecting legal immigrants to the United States. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Much of the immigration literature in the United States points toward a positive association between religious activity and immigrant economic adaptation. Immigrant congregations serve as informal job fairs, build social capital for entrepreneurial activity, and provide a locale for leadership skill development. Using the New Immigrant Survey, this hypothesis of religion as economic resource is tested among immigrants receiving permanent residency within the United States in 2003. Somewhat surprisingly, most findings indicate a null relationship between religion and economic outcomes (i.e. employment, occupation status, and earnings). However, in instances where a significant relationship does exist, non-Protestant immigrants suffer the greatest economic penalty, particularly among non-Protestants who are not regularly participating in a religious organization. In contrast, non-Protestants who regularly participate have a higher likelihood of employment and higher earnings than their non-participating counterparts. Therefore, this paper extends previous literature in specifying that the religion as resource hypothesis operates best for non-Protestant immigrants who are actively involved in their religious organizations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The welfare reform bill adopted in 1996 limited the eligibility of immigrants on federal funding for welfare use, while vesting states with the authority to create new state-funded substitute benefits for immigrants. This paper capitalizes on this inter-state variation in state welfare rules regarding new immigrants and estimates a triple difference-in-difference estimator that provides evidence on the impact of removing public assistance on Mexican immigrants’ infant mortality rates. Using the US linked birth and infant death cohort files from 1995 to 1996 and from 1999 to 2002, I find that infant mortality rates have decreased at a slower rate among children of low-educated Mexican immigrant women compared to their native Mexican-origin counterparts, especially for those mothers residing in less affluent metropolitan counties within their own state. These findings suggest that there may be unintended social costs associated with the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act, resulting in disparate impact on immigrant mothers and infants. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper provides new estimates of Hispanic–white residential segregation in new destinations and established Hispanic places. New Hispanic destinations are defined broadly to include metropolitan cities, suburban places, and rural communities with unusually rapid Hispanic growth rates. The analysis is framed with the spatial assimilation and place stratification perspectives and is based on block data from the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses. The analysis confirms our basic hypothesis – that Hispanics are highly segregated in new Hispanic destinations, often at levels greatly exceeding those in established places. Hispanic suburbanization or exurbanization into new destinations is no marker of spatial assimilation. Consistent with the place stratification perspective, differences in Hispanic–white segregation between new destinations and established Hispanic areas cannot be explained by place-to-place differences in ecological location, population composition, economic growth, employment, or Hispanic–white income inequality. Hispanic segregation in new destinations is especially sensitive to the size of the foreign-born population and to preexisting “minority threats” in communities with large black populations. Segregation levels in new destinations also are less responsive to income disparities between Hispanics and whites; economic assimilation does not insure Hispanic spatial assimilation. Understanding how newcomers are spatially incorporated in new destinations will be a continuing challenge for scholars concerned about the spatial diffusion and apparent geographic balkanization of America’s growing Hispanic population. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, I analyze how the association between Mexico¿U.S. migration and marriage varies across socioeconomic settings in origins. Using Mexican Migration Project data and employing bilevel survival analysis with controls for socioeconomic, migrant network, and marriage market characteristics and family size, I find that single people are most likely to migrate relative to those married in areas of recent industrialization, where the Mexican patriarchal system is weaker and economic opportunities for both men and women make post-marital migration less attractive. Marital status is not significant in agriculture-dependent areas, where the bargaining power of husbands might be higher relative to other settings; their age-profiles of earnings flatter; and remunerated female work scarcer, making migration attractive later in the life course. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Using panel data on 12 European source countries that are followed for 26 years (1873–1898), this paper studies age-specific emigration rates and the age composition of U.S. immigration. Two age groups are the focus of attention, 15–40 and over 40. Emigration-rate models and compositional models that satisfy adding-up conditions are estimated by the Hausman–Taylor Instrumental Variable approach. Younger migrants responded more strongly to job opportunities than to wage differentials, whereas older migrants responded more strongly to wage differentials. Both age groups tended to follow recent past migrants to the U.S. Relatively many younger (and relatively fewer older) migrants came from countries with higher percentages of their work forces in agriculture. Higher source-country birthrates discouraged younger migrants, presumably by raising the cost of family migration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper uses census microdata to examine five aspects of residential assimilation in the greater Los Angeles area. A double cohort method is used to separate the effect of duration in the US from the effect of aging. We track a single arrival cohort that came in 1970–79, and analyze the processes and determinants of their residential assimilation between 1990 and 2000. Groups compared are Mexican, Korean, and Chinese immigrants, along with a common reference group of native-born, non-Hispanic whites. We find that while the Mexicans follow the traditional path of residential assimilation, they are more likely to reside in ethnic districts once they become homeowners. The Chinese are most unusual, locating in the suburbs and attaining very high homeownership soon after arrival, but moving into areas of co-ethnics over time. The Koreans exhibit a strong preference for urban lifestyle, often remaining in the city and renting in districts with whites and Latinos. Residential assimilation is a multifaceted process and the dynamics of residential adjustment are much more complex than previously revealed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines the effects of immigrant status upon grade retention among children in the United States. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we apply survival techniques to describe patterns of retention by immigrant status and event history analysis to model the process of retention over time. Little difference exists between children of different immigrant status in terms of overall retention. However, immigrants of first generation status are at risk of retention for a greater portion of their school careers than are non-immigrants. Furthermore, children of the first generation, especially males, are less likely to experience retention than non-immigrants of similar demographic, family background, and school-related characteristics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Throughout the 20th century African Americans have used migration as a strategy for improving their residential environments and increasing their access to social and economic opportunities. This strategy has taken many forms, including movement from the southern countryside to nearby towns and cities, interregional migration from the South to northern cities, and middle class flight from inner-cities. This paper considers the success of one type of mobility by northern African American males--migration between metropolitan areas. Using census data for 1970, 1980, and 1990 we examine changes in four locational characteristics of metropolitan areas (Black male unemployment, Black family structure, residential segregation, and violent crime) during two time periods (1975-80 and 1985-90). Four groups of Black males are identified: (1) those who remained in the same northern metropolitan area during the 5-year period, (2) those who moved to a different northern metropolitan area, (3) those who moved to a southern metropolitan area, and (4) those who moved to a western metropolitan area. Our findings show that, in general, mobile Black males fared significantly better than those who did not move. Furthermore, the benefits of intermetropolitan migration were not uniform across migrant groups. Overall, migrants to the South enjoyed the greatest locational improvements, followed by migrants to western metropolitan areas. The evidence for migrants within the North was more mixed, in some cases resembling more closely the experience of nonmigrants than the other two migrant groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]