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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.

Objective. The objective of this article is to investigate the effect of household members on the employment outcomes of recent immigrants conceptualizing the household as an employment network unit. Methods. I use data from the 1994 and 1996 March Current Population Surveys and make a taxonomy of the household composition based on the network’s employment capability. Logit and regression models of employment and earnings are estimated. Results. Results show that co-residence with long-term immigrants is detrimental, while co-residence with fellow recent immigrants is beneficial for the employment outcomes of recent immigrants. Conclusions. I conclude that some types of job networks may have a negative impact on the economic incorporation of recent immigrants, that household network effects on employment outcomes are gendered, and that their effectiveness is conditioned by labor market segmentation according to recency of arrival.

This article investigates the effects of welfare payments, wages, and unemployment on women's probability of interstate migration. It also investigates if the income attraction of locations varies with recency of labor market experience. Welfare gains increase the probability of interstate migration. Welfare effects are largest for single mothers with small children and stronger among women with no recent labor market experience. The welfare effects, albeit small, are larger than the wage effects. The wage effects are weaker among women with no recent work experience. Ethnic-specific analyses suggest differences in migration behavior among Anglos, African-Americans, and Puerto Ricans. Copyright 1997 by University of Chicago Press.

Many immigrants to the United States and other industrialized economies eventually return to their home country. More than one million foreign-born persons left the United States between 1960 and 1970.1 Research has documented return migration to Israel, Italy, Ireland, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, as well as the return of thousands of guest workers from industrialized European economies in the mid-seventies.2 However, little is known about how the migration experience shapes the earnings profiles of returnees and how the economic standing of returnees compares to that of stayers in the home labor market. In this article I analyze the transferability of human capital accumulated abroad by return migrants and the economic assimilation process of returnees. I investigate if return migrants can capitalize at home on the years of labor market experience accumulated abroad. I also examine whether return migrants assimilate-that is, if their earnings increase with time spent in the home labor market. To evaluate how returnees fare in the home labor market, the earnings of returnees are compared to the earnings of stayers. One of the findings from the literature of immigration to the United States and other industrialized economies is that immigrants lose human capital on crossing national borders.3 It has also been noted that the earnings of immigrants grow with time spent in the host labor market, suggesting that immigrants undergo a process of assimilation.4 Most of the research on international return migrants is qualitative in nature and the small sample sizes caution about generalizations. A large amount of this research has focused on rural communities. The primary concern in the return migration literature has been the effect on local economic development.5

Puerto Rico has an extraordinarily low employment rate for men. We document the low employment rate using Census of Population and labor force survey data and offer "the rich uncle (Sam) hypothesis" that the connection of the relatively poor economy of Puerto Rico to the wealthier US has created conditions that generate low employment. In support of the hypothesis, we show: 1) that GNP and GDP have diverged on the island, distorting the relationship between GDP and employment, due potentially to federal tax benefits to companies operating in Puerto Rico; 2) transfers to Puerto Rican families funded mainly by the federal government, which account for about 22 percent of personal income; 3) open borders to the U.S. that give men with high desire for work incentive to migrate to the US, and potentially creates a lower bound to wages on the island; (4) a wage structure with relatively higher earnings in low paid jobs; and (5) employment in the informal sector, which is unmeasured in official statistics. We note that other regional economies with rich "uncles", such as East Germany with West Germany, Southern Italy with Northern Italy, have comparable employment problems.