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Fourteen states and the District of Columbia allow unauthorized immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. Using variation in the timing and location of these policy changes, we show these Unauthorized Immigrant License Polices (UILPs) are associated with a 1% increase in both the number of licensed drivers and liability insurance coverage, although we do not document a statistically significant relationship with auto insurance claims. Nor do we detect a significant relationship between UILPs and the number of miles driven, vehicle registrations, air quality, or travel behaviors. Overall, our results are consistent with UILPs licensing unauthorized immigrants who were already driving. (JEL R48, G22, K37)

It has been widely documented that unauthorized immigrants experience adverse economic incorporation in destination countries, particularly in the global North. Faced with restricted employment opportunities, many are drawn into informalizing segments of the labour market where earnings are low and unstable. Much less is known about how immigrant workers fare in the informal economy of cities of the South. Using surveys conducted in 2004, 2007 and 2015, we examine the economic outcomes of immigrant and native-born workers who participate in the day labour markets of Tshwane, South Africa. In 2004 there were signs that foreign-born workers enjoyed modestly better outcomes than South Africa-born workers. In the latter periods, however, these advantages have disappeared and there are indications of a downward convergence of employment outcomes. The article concludes with a call for creating worker centres to regulate informal job markets for the benefit of workers, regardless of immigration status.

A number of states have adopted laws that require employers to use the federal government's E-Verify program to check workers' eligibility to work legally in the United States. Using data from the Current Population Survey, this study examines whether such laws affect labor market outcomes among Mexican immigrants who are likely to be unauthorized. We find evidence that E-Verify mandates reduce average hourly earnings among likely unauthorized male Mexican immigrants while increasing labor force participation among likely unauthorized female Mexican immigrants. Furthermore, the mandates appear to lead to better labor market outcomes among workers likely to compete with unauthorized immigrants. Employment rises among male Mexican immigrants who are naturalized citizens in states that adopt E-Verify mandates, and earnings rise among U.S.-born Hispanic men. There is no evidence of significant effects among U.S.-born non-Hispanic whites.

As the United States has expanded its immigration control strategies, police participation in immigration enforcement has increased in scope and intensity. Local law enforcement agencies contribute to immigration enforcement in three key ways: through the direct enforcement of immigration law, through cooperation with federal immigration authorities, and through the everyday policing of immigrant communities. These enforcement approaches have consequences for unauthorized immigrants, and for the agencies and officers tasked with providing them police services. This article reviews local law enforcement practices and argues that future research should move away from an exclusive examination of police policies towards immigrants, to consider how the policing of immigrants actually occurs on the ground. Moreover, we argue that as long as discretionary arrests funnel removable immigrants into the deportation system, some immigrant communities will perceive policing as fundamentally unfair and discriminatory.

In response to the dramatic rise in the number of unauthorized immigrants to the United States, every state has passed some form of immigration legislation. These laws appear to be predicated on a belief that unauthorized immigrants impose greater costs than benefits to state and local communities, including the labor market. The purpose of this paper is to examine some evidence on what workers should expect if the immigration legislation is successful in eliminating undocumented workers from states’ labor markets. C � 2012 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

This paper compares authorized and unauthorized immigrants in terms of twelve job-quality indicators. Along all indicators examined, unauthorized immigrants score lower than the authorized. The lower job quality of the unauthorized prevails even when compared to authorized immigrants with similar educational levels and duration of stay.