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In recent decades, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States has increased substantially, while simultaneously housing affordability has become a crisis. Despite these trends and t...

Employer demand for less-skilled foreign workers admitted on temporary worker visas has increased considerably in recent years. Issuances of H-2A visas for agricultural workers and J-1 visas for exchange visitors have soared, and the cap for H-2B visas for nonagricultural workers is reached well before the end of the issuance period. This article examines the rise in employer demand for these programs, focusing on the roles of improved economic conditions, tougher immigration enforcement, and the drop in the number of less-skilled workers, including unauthorized immigrants. Economic conditions appear to be the most important determinant of employer demand. The upward trend in employer usage of the programs suggests that they can be a viable alternative to hiring unauthorized workers, and even more so if restructured appropriately.

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)

The threat of deportation shapes the way that unauthorized immigrants and their families interact with social institutions. For example, the adult children of unauthorized immigrants might avoid institutions that keep formal records (“surveilling” institutions) because such institutions could potentially expose their families to deportation. Using intergenerational data from the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles survey, we examine the relationship between immigrant parents’ authorization status and their adult children’s institutional participation ( n = 3,283). Results from Poisson and propensity-weighted regression models suggest that the adult children of unauthorized immigrants were more likely to avoid surveilling institutions, such as formal employment, than those with authorized parents. In contrast, parental immigration status was unrelated to their attachment to non-surveilling institutions, such as community groups or religious organizations. This finding suggests that the adult children of unauthorized immigrants are not systematically disengaged from all institutions but may avoid surveilling institutions in particular due to fear of their family’s deportation. This type of system avoidance may have long-term consequences for their social and economic mobility.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) policy has given unauthorized immigrants access to many opportunities, specifically education. While DACA has improved the lives of many undocumente...

Over the past thirty years, there has been an increase in the number of immigrant day labourers in the United States. The presence of day labourers has led to numerous conflicts in municipalities. Some locals benefit from the labour performed by day labourers and believe they do no harm, while others see them as “illegal” immigrants that pose a threat to the community. For many, the legitimacy of day labourers remains uncertain, which opens a space for opponents and supporters to push for competing policies. Uncertain legitimacy and back and forth conflicts result in policies that are continuously being tugged between exclusionary and inclusionary measures. Whereas much of the literature on local immigration policies suggests that subnational governments opt for either exclusionary or inclusionary measures, this paper reveals the volatility of local immigration policies and the blurring of lines between them.

Deportation or removal from the United States for criminal justice–involved noncitizens has been described as analogous to incapacitation. A common assertion is that if immigration authorities remove these noncitizens from the United States, future criminal justice involvement will be averted. The present study explores the hypothesized incapacitation effect of immigration removal and tests whether a record of prior removal predicts postremoval rearrest patterns. The sample consists of 521 foreign-born males with a verified immigration removal from the United States, following transfer into federal immigration custody from Los Angeles County Jail in 2002. California rearrests after the date of verified U.S. removal were tracked through 2011. Results indicate that 48% of the sample was rearrested at least once and 22% had three or more postremoval arrests. These findings do not support the hypothesis that deportation equates to permanent incapacitation. The study also found that a record of prior removal did not predict postremoval rearrest likelihood or frequency. As a single longitudinal study and the first of its kind, these results alone cannot inform responsible policy recommendations. The study does, however, highlight directions for further research and the pressing need for access to individual-level immigration data for empirical study and public distribution of results.

A growing literature has documented the displacement effects of tougher interior immigration enforcement measures; yet, we still lack an understanding of where the displaced populations are choosing to relocate. In this paper, we address this question using Arizona as a case study. Specifically, we examine the destinations of Mexican non-citizens leaving Arizona for other states in the union following the adoption of tougher enforcement measures using two different groups of control states: one consisting of all states that had not adopted similar measures and another one derived using the synthetic control method. We find that Mexican non-citizens who migrated from Arizona to other US states went, primarily, to New Mexico and California. Other destination states differed with the control group being used, underscoring the sensitivity of this type of analysis to the choice of control group. Furthermore, the trajectories of Mexican non-citizens leaving Arizona overlapped with those of non-Hispanic natives, hinting on the role that socioeconomic and political factors, in addition to potential complementarities between immigrants and natives, might have played in explaining the destinations of Mexican non-citizens leaving Arizona after 2007.

Contemporary U.S. immigration policy debates would be better informed by more accurate data about how many unauthorized immigrants reside in the country, where they reside, and the conditions in which they live. Researchers use demographic methods to generate aggregated information about the number and demographic composition of the unauthorized immigrant population. But understanding their social and economic characteristics (e.g., educational attainment, occupations) often requires identifying likely unauthorized immigrants at the individual level. We describe a new method that pools data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which identifies unauthorized immigrants, with data from the American Community Survey (ACS), which does not. This method treats unauthorized status as missing data to be imputed by multiple imputation techniques. Likely unauthorized immigrants in the ACS are identified based on similarities to self-reported unauthorized immigrants in the SIPP. This process allows state and local disaggregation of unauthorized immigrant populations and analysis of subpopulations such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applicants.

This paper explores how working on a faculty-led research project influenced the views of Master of Social Work students concerning unauthorized immigrants. Five graduate assistants worked for one year with two faculty members and one doctoral student to code data from interviews with social workers at immigrant-serving organizations in South Carolina. The master’s students then reflected on what they learned from participating in data analysis tasks, indicating that the experience had further sensitized them to the social justice concerns confronting unauthorized immigrants. Drawing on social contact theory, we argue that student participation in faculty-led research can provide a form of indirect social exposure to other groups, which reduce bias, and suggest that such experiences be included in how educators conceptualize the implicit curriculum in schools of social work.

Prior research has examined the incorporation outcomes among unauthorized migrants after implementation of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). However, few studies have evaluated how legalization opportunities produce gendered outcomes among the second-generation children of unauthorized immigrants. We examine the association of legalization opportunities provided through IRCA with the years of schooling attained by the sons and daughters of Mexican American immigrants. By distinguishing likely eligibility for one of two programs implemented under IRCA—the Legally Authorized Workers and Special Agricultural Workers programs—we consider whether type of legalization program matters by assessing gender differences in schooling among children of Mexican immigrants. Although legalization provides a substantial educational premium for the children of Mexican immigrants regardless of gender, the size of the legalization premium is smaller, on average, for sons than daughters. The advantage to daughters is especially notable among those with parents eligible for the Special Agricultural Workers program. We consider these findings in the context of theories of immigrant incorporation and intergenerational mobility.

Wage differences between authorized and unauthorized Mexican immigrants can be explained by human capital factors prior to the 1986 passage of employer sanctions, which prohibited knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens. However, a significant post-1986 wage differential has been interpreted as employers “passing along” expected costs of sanctions through lower wages for unauthorized immigrants. I test this explanation using administrative data on employer sanctions enforcement, finding employer sanctions enforcement levels are related to Mexican immigrants’ wages but have no statistically significant differential effect based on legal status. Estimated savings to employers due to the pay gap are orders of magnitude larger than actual fines.

Planners and elected officials may not be familiar with employment or educational barriers faced by immigrants or understand cultural traditions and practices or how to handle the issue of an increase in unauthorized immigrants. We identify policy gaps, a growing body of research on planning for unauthorized immigrant communities, and some emergent best practices for immigrant incorporation. What can the city do, and how are cities limited? What models developed for planning with and for immigrant communities, adapting to immigrant needs, and managing change in cities that have not traditionally had large immigrant populations?

This research examines the effects of state laws banning access to in-state resident tuition for unauthorized immigrant students in the United States. These laws were implemented between 2005 and 2012. We evaluate the policy effects on (a) college enrollment, (b) school dropout rates of unauthorized immigrants, and (c) the enrollment of U.S. citizens in higher education. Multivariate triple-differences models are used. We find significant negative effects on the college attendance rates of unauthorized immigrants. Policies have primarily affected recent high school graduates. With regard to dropping out of school, we find no evidence of dynamic effects. Nor do we find evidence of benefits in college attendance for non-Hispanic, Hispanic, or Mexican naturalized citizens.

The 1986 US Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was directed at tackling the problem of growing unauthorized migration through legalization of unauthorized immigrants, increasing border security and sanctioning employers who hired unauthorized immigrants. Our paper investigates how the IRCA affected the migration dynamics of male Mexican immigrants focusing on their age of onset of migration and the duration of their first trip. We find that the IRCA reduced unauthorized migration to the US while it does not seem to have had a significant effect on the return rate from the US to Mexico of undocumented male immigrants.

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.

This work was supported by grants from the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research and the National Science Foundation grant 1822787. Over the past three decades, a central new challenge confronting millions of children of immigrants has emerged: growing up in a mixed-status family in which at least one member lacks legal authorization to live and work in the United States. A body of recent research argues that unauthorized immigrant status is the fundamental determinant of integration for unauthorized immigrants, with inter-generational consequences for their U.S.-born children. We discuss the immigration and other policies that create the particular social context within which unauthorized immigration status becomes so detrimental for integration. Specifically, we focus on federal and state policies that undermine the very factors thought to protect children and support the integration of new generations of Americans: families and social networks, economic resources and opportunities, and health. We conclude with recommendations for future research. Postprint

As the largest immigration policy in 25 years, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) made deportation relief and work authorization available to 1.7 million unauthorized immigrants. This paper looks at how DACA affects DACA-eligible immigrants' labor market outcomes. I use a difference-in-differences design for unauthorized immigrants near the criteria cutoffs for DACA eligibility. I find DACA increases the likelihood of working by increasing labor force participation and decreasing the unemployment rate for DACA-eligible immigrants. I also find DACA increases the income of unauthorized immigrants in the bottom of the income distribution. I find little evidence that DACA affects the likelihood of attending school. Using these estimates, DACA moved 50,000 to 75,000 unauthorized immigrants into employment. If the effects of Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) are similar to DACA, then DAPA could potentially move over 250,000 unauthorized immigrants into employment.

We explore the impact of authorization on the poverty exposure of households headed by undocumented immigrants. The identification strategy makes use of the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provided a temporary work authorization and reprieve from deportation to eligible immigrants. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we compare DACA-eligible to DACA-ineligible likely unauthorized immigrants, before and after the program implementation. We find that DACA reduced the likelihood of life in poverty of households headed by eligible individuals by 38 percent, hinting at the gains from even temporary authorization programs.

Public rhetoric suggests that unauthorized immigrants may engage in marriage fraud for legal security and economic gain. Academic scholarship that emphasizes economically strategic actors corroborates this claim. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 1.5-generation unauthorized Brazilian young adults, I find that most of my respondents are opposed to marrying strictly for papers, even though becoming “legally American” could bring opportunities for socioeconomic mobility. Like their American peers in young adulthood, many 1.5-generation Brazilians emphasized that they are not interested in marrying in their 20s. Women, in particular, articulated their internalization of lifecourse norms as a function of their socialization in the United States. Yet, 1.5-generation Brazilians also disclosed that they did not want to establish new relationships or transform old relationships for instrumental reasons. Ultimately, strategic-economic approaches provide less insight into why my respondents do not marry for papers than the normative and relational dynamics of their transitions to adulthood.

Interactions between local, state and federal governments as regards immigration policies began to undergo a dramatic change with the passage of Proposition 187 in California in 1994. Seemingly settled issues over the relative prerogatives of different levels of government and even different branches of government have since been the subject of frequent contention in many venues and in many domains of immigration policy. During this period, especially in the last decade, a new dynamism has developed in immigration federalism that is evident in both policymaking processes and policy outcomes.In policy processes, this dynamism is characterized by an increasingly broad distribution of powers and responsibilities across all levels of government. As a result, an ever-broader array of actors has gained a say over immigration policies. These include not only elected office holders and government officials but also advocates and activists from many sectors of civil society including immigrant communities themselves. Finally, the different levels of government and policy actors do not operate in isolation but rather in vigorous interaction across multiple levels of government and among advocates of different sorts both in the formulation and implementation of policy. This new dynamism is reflected in recent scholarship that describes models of federalism based on discourse, intermediation and collaboration among governments rather than resting primarily on the longstanding constitutional arguments over the balance of power between the states and the federal government.The policy outcomes produced by this new dynamism are marked by highly divergent and varied results. The federal government devolved some powers over welfare and policing policies regarding immigrants, but implementation by state and local governments was largely dictated by local factors rather than Washington's intent. Meanwhile, many sub-federal governments have taken the initiative to assume powers on immigration matters. In some cases they have mitigated the punitive effects of being unauthorized under federal rules and have created pathways of civic inclusion for immigrants who otherwise suffer isolation from the body politic. Taking the opposite approach, other jurisdictions have adopted enforcement regimes meant to heighten the impact of federal exclusion. In effect, Washington still exercises exclusive power to determine an individual's immigration status, but many state and local governments have enacted policies that define the practical consequences of that status.The paper concludes by positing the likelihood of heightened differentiation on immigration policy on a state and local basis, particularly if Washington remains unable to enact a new policy regime in this area. Instead of a single, dominant federal policy, many state and local jurisdictions will create policies that condition the immigrant experience sufficiently to influence the size and content of migration flows. Across a highly variegated landscape of immigration policies, some places will be welcoming while others will be inhospitable, even hostile, to newcomers. This new dynamism in immigration federalism and the resulting variety of outcomes are products of large, deeply rooted trends in American society that are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Unauthorized immigrants and immigration enforcement are once again at the center of heated public debates and reform agendas. This paper examines the importance of applying a subject-centered approach to understanding immigration noncompliance and to developing effective, ethical, and equitable immigration policies. In general, a subject-centered approach focuses on the beliefs, values, and perceptions of individuals whose behavior the law seeks to regulate. This approach has been widely used in non-immigration law contexts to produce a richer and more nuanced understanding of legal noncompliance. By contrast, the subject-centered approach has been an overlooked and underappreciated tool in the study of immigration noncompliance. This paper argues that a subject-centered understanding of why people obey or disobey the law has the potential to generate new insights that can advance public knowledge and inform public policy on immigration in a number of important ways. Specifically, the paper considers how the use of this approach might help us: (1) recognize the basic humanity and moral agency of unauthorized immigrants, (2) appreciate not only direct and immediate costs of immigration enforcement policies, but also their indirect and long-term costs, and (3) develop new and innovative strategies to achieving desired policy goals.

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 this article we examine whether the proposal to criminalize illegal stay in the Netherlands was preceded by increased negative media attention for unauthorized immigrants. Using a corpus linguistics approach, we carried out a quantitative discourse analysis of all newspaper articles on unauthorized migrants over a period of 15 years. Our results show that the amount of media coverage actually strongly decreased in the years before the proposal, and this coverage was moreover increasingly less negative. This study thus nuances the somewhat popular belief that unauthorized migrants are increasingly portrayed in negative ways and shows that the framing of migrants as criminals is a more diffuse process in which the media seem to follow rather than fuel politics and policy.

The present study examines the long-term recidivism patterns of a group of unauthorized immigrants identified to be at high risk of recidivism. Using a sample of 517 male unauthorized immigrants, we used three measures of recidivism to assess 9-year rearrest differences between unauthorized immigrants who have and who have not been previously removed from the United States. Results indicate that prior removal was a significant risk marker for recidivism, with previously removed immigrants showing a higher likelihood of rearrest, a greater frequency of rearrest, and a more rapid time-to-first rearrest. While the present study does not establish whether previous removal is a consistent indicator of high recidivism, it suggests that this group of unauthorized immigrants may be worthy of review and policy consideration. Much potential value for law enforcement lies in the sharing of federal immigration records with academics to further study the outcomes of unauthorized immigrants.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that a significant percentage of unauthorized immigrants are potentially eligible for some sort of immigration relief, but they either do not know it or are not able to pursue lawful immigration status for other reasons. However, no published study that we are aware of has systematically analyzed this question. The purpose of this study is thus to evaluate and quantify the number of unauthorized immigrants who, during the course of seeking out legal services, have been determined to be potentially eligible for some sort of immigration benefit or relief that provides lawful immigration status. Using the recent implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program as a laboratory for this work, this study attempts to answer the question of the number of unauthorized immigrants who, without knowing it, may already be potentially eligible for lawful immigration status. In surveying 67 immigrant-serving organizations that provide legal services, we find that 14.3 percent of those found to be eligible for DACA were also found to be eligible for some other form of immigration relief—put otherwise, 14.3 percent of individuals that were found to be eligible for DACA, which provides temporary relief from deportation, may now be on a path towards lawful permanent residency. We find that the most common legal remedies available to these individuals are family-based petitions (25.5 percent), U-Visas (23.9 percent), and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (12.6 percent). These findings make clear that—with comprehensive immigration reform legislation or eligibility for administrative relief — legal screening can have significant and long-lasting implications on the lives of unauthorized immigrants and their families.

Experiences under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) may prove to be a poor guide for understanding how smoothly today's unauthorized immigrants will integrate into the economy under reform proposals such as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S. 744). While IRCA provided a relatively quick path to legal permanent resident status, S. 744 proposes a decade-long process with much attendant uncertainty. This and other provisions in S. 744 may adversely affect immigrants' integration and economic mobility.

Using the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A. FANS), this paper examines the association between the presence of co-resident extended kin and children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors. The paper demonstrates the differential role of extended kin by family structure, as well as across parental immigrant status – specifically, nativity and documentation status. Children in the sample were found to be disadvantaged in extended family households, especially with regard to internalizing behaviors. This disadvantageous association was found mostly among married-parent extended family households, whereas there was no association between the presence of extended kin and behavior problems in children from single-parent families. This pattern emerged more clearly among children of documented immigrants, compared to those with native-born parents and those whose parents were unauthorized immigrants. These findings suggest a need to modify previous theories on extended family living arrangements; they also provide policy implications for immigrant families.

During the 2000s, several states adopted laws requiring employers to verify new employees’ eligibility to work legally in the USA. This study uses data from the 2005–2014 American Community Survey to examine how such laws affect unauthorized immigrants’ locational choices. The results indicate that having an E-Verify law reduces the number of less-educated prime-age immigrants from Mexico and Central America—immigrants who are likely to be unauthorized—living in a state. We find evidence that some new migrants are diverted to other states, but also suggestive evidence that some already-present migrants leave the country entirely. JEL codes: J15, J61, J68

In the late 2000s, several U.S. states and local governments enacted legislation to make work and life difficult for unauthorized immigrants within their jurisdictions. We investigate how these devolved immigration enforcement laws affected the migration of Latinos to these states. We find that after these hostile policies came into effect, noncitizen and naturalized Latinos from states without such policies were much less likely to move to states with them than in the 1990s. U.S.-born Latinos exhibit migration aversion to hostile states, albeit at a weaker level. Fear of discrimination and the blending of Latinos with different legal status within families might account for this broad Latino group migration response. Hostile policies produced no significant change in the interstate migration patterns of a control group of U.S.-born whites. A counterfactual analysis indicates that absent these enforcement regimes, the migratory redistribution of Latinos to hostile states from other states in the late 2000s would have continued the dispersive pattern of the late 1990s. We draw parallels between our research and state policy effects on U.S. internal migration for other groups.A finales de la década del 2000, varios estados y gobiernos locales de los EE.UU. aprobaron medidas legales para hacer difíciles el trabajo y la vida a inmigrantes ilegales dentro de sus jurisdicciones. Investigamos en qué grado afectó la aplicación de estas leyes a la migración de latinos hacia estos estados. Hallamos que luego de la aplicación de tales políticas hostiles, los latinos no nacionalizados y los naturalizados en estados que no aplicaban aquellas políticas tenían menos inclinación que en los años 1990 a desplazarse a estados que sí lo hacían. Los latinos nacidos en los EE.UU. exhiben aversión migratoria hacia estados hostiles, aunque con un grado mucho menor. El temor a la discriminación y la mezcla de latinos con estatus legales diferentes dentro de la familias podrían ser la explicación a la respuesta migratoria de este grupo latino más amplio. Las políticas hostiles no produjeron cambio significativo alguno en los patrones de migración interestatal en un grupo de control formado por blancos nacidos en los EE.UU. Un análisis hipotético indica que sin estos regímenes de aplicación de las leyes, la redistribución migratoria de latinos a estados hostiles desde otros estados, a finales de la década del 2000, habría continuado el patrón dispersivo de finales de los 1990. Trazamos paralelos entre nuestra investigación y los efectos de la política estatal sobre la migración interna americana para otros grupos.

Jaworsky offers a look into the potential implications of all the symbolic boundary work taking place around immigration and highlights the contribution of the Strong Program in studying this issue. Social movement “success” is notoriously difficult to measure; looking at the political outcomes and cultural consequences of mobilization around immigration reveals a complex landscape of “results.” Both sides can claim victories, the intensity of which ebbs and flows. This situation warrants future research, not least because the societal stakes are so high. More than 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States live in a social limbo and even those with legal status are often considered a threat. Fears or worries about immigration abound, and meaningful dialogue seems out of reach.