Big think tuvalu

What determines attitudes to immigration in European countries? An analysis at the regional level
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We find that regions with a higher percentage of immigrants born outside the EU and a higher unemployment rate among the immigrant population show a higher probability that natives express negative attitudes to immigration. Regions with a higher unemployment rate among natives, however, show less pronounced anti-immigrant attitudes.
https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/1/3/311/950494



The long-term outcomes of refugees: tracking the progress of the East African Asians

"Refugees are often perceived as an economic "burden", as the current debate on the European refugee crisis illustrates. But there is little quantitative evidence on the medium-term outcomes of refugees in the UK. We fill this gap by looking at the case of "East African Asians" who arrived as refugees in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We use data from the UK Census to describe their economic outcomes forty years later. We show that their outcomes are at least as good as the population average, with the younger cohort performing better."
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"We interpret that as some positive consequences of being refugees rather than regular migrants. One possibility is that this major experience strengthened
positive non-cognitive skills and psychological traits. There are other possibilities: it could be that the Asian population of East Africa was as a whole better educated than the Asian population who migrated into the UK from Asia, with this human capital difference mattering more than their likely disadvantage in other forms of capital (Waldinger, 2016). Either way, we believe that the likelihood is that the East African Asians did so well after their flight to the UK because of their cognitive and/or non-cognitive skills."
http://repec.ioe.ac.uk/REPEc/pdf/qsswp1805.pdf

Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion
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"The literature broadly agrees that the presence of braceros slowed harvest mechanization (Grove 1996) and bracero exclusion accelerated mechanization (Vialet and McClure 1980, 46; Morgan and Gardner 1982, 399; Heinicke and Grove 2008, 288). McBride (1963) details how Labor Secretary James Mitchell’s regulatory actions to restrict bracero usage caused cotton farmers to universally adopt mechanical harvesters in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas."
https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/immigration-restrictions-active-labor-market-policy-evidence-mexican-bracero-exclusion.pdf

Massive Migration and Elections: Evidence from the Refugee Crisis in Greece
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Our results show a positive and significant effect of refugees’ presence on votes for the Greek extreme‐right party Golden Dawn. More precisely, we find that a 1 per cent increase in the share of refugees is associated with an increase of 5 per cent in the share of votes for Golden Dawn. This outcome is robust under different estimation methodologies and placebo regressions.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/imig.12409

Youth minimum wages and youth employment
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"Increases in the level of (youth) minimum wages exert a substantial negative impact on the employment rate for young individuals."
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40173-018-0098-4


Mexican immigration, occupational clustering, and the local labor market adjustment of African-American workers
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This paper examines the effect of Mexican immigrants on wages for African-Americans using various estimation methods and finds consistent negative estimates, pointing to an inverse relationship between Mexican immigrants and wages for African-Americans, which is consistent with crowding out and substitution effects.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40176-016-0062-2



Economic Reasoning with a Racial Hue: Is the Immigration Consensus Purely Race Neutral?
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"If there is a broad immigration consensus devoid of prejudice, then it seems easy to obtain compromise on comprehensive immigration reform. Indeed, it does seem to be a puzzle that despite apparent mass consensus on the issue, there has been nothing but gridlock in Washington. Our results may help tell part of that story: attitudes towards immigration may be based in economic reasoning, but with a racial tinge."
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/gsb-cmis/gsb-cmis-download-auth/441956

Skill Selection and American Immigration Policy in the Interwar Period
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"The main focus of the paper is on the role that policy played in influencing the selection of migrants. I study the American quota laws of 1921, 1924, and 1929, and find that increasingly strict quotas led to an increase in the skill level of migrants as well as a shift from agricultural to manufacturing workers first, and
from manufacturing to professional workers later."
https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/working_papers/4585/161january-wulfers.pdf




Immigrants and Savers: A Rich New Database on the Irish in 1850s New York
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The EISB data offer an extraordinary opportunity to study immigrants and their savings behavior in mid-nineteenth century New York. We demonstrate that the Irish
Famine immigrants saved, and that they saved a lot, with a median increase of 111% from the initial deposit. The EISB database offers an antidote to more traditional stereotypes of the Irish Famine immigrant to New York as mired in poverty.  It suggests that even the poorest immigrants, including those who had recently arrived from the remotest corners of Ireland, were keen to save and often able to save substantial sums.

A significant proportion of the largest savers were unskilled workers, and many were women. Moreover, there was a significant correlation between place of birth in Ireland and savings patterns in New York. There is also a correlation between occupation and savings, though not always in the ways one would have imagined. These data should provide rewarding research opportunities to economists and historians for years to come.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2956886



Immigration and economic growth: do origin and destination matter?
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This article assesses the heterogeneous effects of immigration on economic growth depending on both the origin and the destination countries. We find that the growth-enhancing effect of immigration is significantly larger when immigration flows from developed to developing economies than when it does to those that include both developed and developing economies. We interpret these results as evidence of immigrants from developed countries bringing with them their advanced knowledge into the developing countries.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00036846.2018.1466987


In-migration and Dilution of Community Social Capital
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"The analysis in this paper finds that higher levels of in-migration lead to lower levels of community social capital. In-migration may increase a community's demographic heterogeneity, which Alesina and La Ferrara (2000) have found to diminish the community's level of social capital. Additionally, communities with high migration rates may not bother to invest in social capital development (e.g., see Glaeser and Redlick 2009). And, since migrants are less likely to have close family ties in their new communities, high levels of in-migration may very well undermine feelings of trust (Kan 2007). While our findings are more in line with the studies cited here, they contradict findings by Lesage and Ha (2012) in which they report that in-migration has a positive effect on county-level social capital."

"[T]his paper also offers an additional explanation for communities', sometimes hostile, objection to immigration (Schiff 2002; Manole and Schiff 2013). Opposition to immigration can be shown to be rooted in economic competition, cultural prejudice, and redistributive financial pressures (Baerg, Hotchkiss, and Quispe-Agnoli 2018).
The results in this paper confirm that loss in community social capital may be yet another source of opposition to immigration."
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2018/CES-WP-18-32.pdf


How Much Does Amnesty Strengthen the Safety Net? Evidence from the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
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"We have provided a variety of evidence that immigrant legal status – particularly, achieving legal permanent residency – increases the probability of receiving income support through the tax system... Our findings imply that IRCA’s legalization programs increased EITC refunds by about $2 billion in 1996, representing about 7% of total federal spending on the EITC in that year. These new EITC outlays were *partially* offset by increases in state income and sales tax contributions, suggesting that new EITC claims stemming from amnesty helped to relieve [only] some of the geographically concentrated “fiscal burden” of immigration."
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~ethang/cascio&lewis_march2017.pdf


The Evolution of the Immigration Debate: A Study of Party Positions Over the Last Half-Century
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Our findings also speak to debates about anti-immigrant parties. Much has been made of the role of the Radical Right in setting the terms of the debate. However, we show that the rise of anti-immigrant parties is only weakly correlated with mainstream parties’ approach to immigration.

On dimensions of salience, substantive focus and sentiment, our findings provide little evidence to suggest that AIP’s dictate, or even influence, how centrist parties address the topic. This result is consistent with recent work (Oldham and Bale 2015) that emphasizes the autonomous role of the larger parties in deciding when and how to weed into this politically fraught topic.

While we cannot conclude that AIP’s have been instrumental in structuring mainstream party approaches, we can conclude that one of their most often-
voiced critiques – that there is no difference between Left and Right when it comes to immigration – has some merit.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3192913


Legalizing undocumented immigrants
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"Legalization programs may attract more illegal immigration, [and] may have negative consequences for workers who compete with newly regularized immigrants, through increased competition for jobs and lower wages. Firms may see a reduction in the responsiveness of the available workforce following legalization. Government budgets may be negatively affected through increased spending on social services, especially if newly legalized immigrants are relatively poor. Issues of fairness make legalization a contentious tool for dealing with undocumented immigrants."
https://wol.iza.org/articles/legalizing-undocumented-immigrants

Immigrants and undesirables: “terrorism” and the “terrorist” in 1930s France
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"...While the regime could not deny that French men were engaged in terrorism, it presented such violence as an un-French act committed at the behest of a hostile foreign government. In December 1941, Paul Marion’s General Secretariat for Information argued that terrorism threatened peace, the internal unity of the country and the rebirth of France. The counter-terrorist struggle was thus framed as the patriotic duty of all French against foreigners and traitors directed from Moscow or London (Paris-Soir, 10 December 1941, 8; Le Matin 10 December 1941, 3). Three years later, historian René Martel made the same connection in an article entitled, “Foreigners and terrorism”. Martel found it “regrettable” that foreigners participated in attacks against, “the person and property of authentic French”.He continued that France had for too long been the dumping ground of Europe and that in the “interests of decent foreigners”, it was time to sort the wheat from the chaff (Paris-Soir, 22 January 1944, 3 [author's emphasis]). Such sentiments would not have been out of place in the final years of the Third Republic."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17539153.2018.1489210

Welfare-Based Income Among Immigrants in the Netherlands: Differences in Social and Human Capital
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"We did not find evidence for our assumption that human capital increases knowledge about the bureaucratic procedures since, under the condition of having
no paid job, human capital does not increase the likelihood of relying stronger on benefit-based incomes. On the other hand, we do find substantial effects with
regard to our social capital expectations. Immigrants who socialize with native Dutch persons in a formal setting are more likely to find their way to an occupa-
tional-disabilities-benefit-based income. Therefore, this study supports the idea that to prevent immigrants from falling into a more-structurally-vulnerable position, ongoing integration processes are needed. Especially, when host countries’ social security systems involve complicated application procedures (Nahapiet,
2011)."

"This study’s results support previous findings that human and social capital are helpful in the labor market, keeping immigrants from relying on unemployment
benefits, disability benefits, or social assistance. In particular, for reliance on social assistance, differences in capital have strong effects... Here, however, only social capital seemed to play a role."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15562948.2017.1420276


Ethnic origin and identity in the Jewish population of Israel
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"The paper addresses the multifaceted quality of ethnicity in the Jewish population of Israel by probing into the ethnic categories and their subjective meaning. The analyses utilise data collected during 2015–2016 on a representative sample of Israelis age 15 and older, as part of the seventh and eighth rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS)... The analyses reveal a strong preference among Jews in Israel to portray their ancestry in inclusive national categories – Israeli and Jewish – rather than more particularistic, ethno-cultural, categories (e.g. Mizrahim, Moroccan, Ashkenazim, Polish, etc)."

"Yet, whether Israeli or Jewish receives primacy differs by migration generation, socioeconomic standing, religion, and political dispositions. While the findings clearly add to our understanding of Israeli society, they are also telling with regard to immigrant societies more generally. First, they reveal a multi-layered structure of ethnic identification. Second, they suggest that ethnic identities are quite resistant to change. Third, ethnically mixed marriages appear to erode ethnic identities and are likely to replace them with national identities."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1492370


Effects of immigration on house prices in Canada
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"Each year, Canada admits about 225 000 immigrants, but information on the effect of immigration on house prices in this country is lacking. Our extensive econometric analysis based on panel data at census division levels obtained from the 1996, 2001 and 2006 population censuses indicates a statistically significant but small effect of immigration on prices of privately owned dwellings in Canada. An out migration of the native born from the areas where new immigrants settle, or an increased supply of housing due to expectations of higher demand in those areas may have caused this result."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00036846.2010.548788

The Dynamic Impact of Immigration on Natives' Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Israel
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This paper studies the dynamic impact of mass migration from the Former Soviet Union to Israel on natives’ labor market outcomes. We empirically examine these alternative hypotheses using data from Israel’s Labor Force and Income Surveys from 1989 to 1999. We find that wages of both men and women are negatively correlated with the fraction of immigrants with little local experience in a given labor market segment. A 10 percent increase in the share of immigrants lowers natives’ wages in the short run by 1 to 3 percent, but this effect dissolves after 4 to 7 years. This result is robust to a variety of different segmentations of the labor market, to the inclusion of cohort effects, and to different dynamic structures in the residual term of the wage equation. On the other hand, we do not find any effect of immigration on employment, neither in the short nor in the long run.
http://ftp.iza.org/dp1315.pdf

The Impact of Immigration on Wages, Internal Migration and Welfare
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The effects of immigration are the subject of considerable debate in the U.S. This paper quantifies the impact of immigration,  taking into account migration responses as well as heterogeneity in labor types and city characteristics.  Despite the public concern, the results indicate that a large increase in the stock of immigrants has little impact on the wages of natives [in aggregate]. The impacts are more highly concentrated on previous immigrants. Most welfare losses come from rising housing costs.

Further,  a policy favoring the entry of high-skill immigrants leads to welfare gains for low skill workers, while reducing the wages and welfare of high skill workers. As a result, this policy reduces real local wage inequality across workers.  The gains from internal migration are sizable,
particularly for high skill natives in the popular destinations of immigrants.

This paper shows that there are substantial variations in the welfare effects across and within local labor markets.  Out-migration in response to new migrants is stronger in cities with larger shares of previous immigrants and natives who already left their birthplaces. Cities with (i) lower productivity, (ii) more inelastic housing supply or (iii) lower amenities are also more likely to have an outflow of incumbent workers.  Consequently,  the initial adverse welfare impacts tend to be
attenuated in these locations.

Further, it is important to take into account heterogeneity in labor types: an out-migration of workers of a given type raises the local wages for workers of that type, while reducing the local wages of workers with complementary characteristics. In all cases, there is a significant increase in rental income accrued to landlords. This suggests that an appropriate tax scheme on rental income and housing regulations would be an important consideration if policymakers want to redistribute gains/losses more evenly.
https://www.pier.or.th/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/pier_dp_069.pdf


Liberalization of European migration and the immigration of skilled people to Sweden
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Migration policies can have a strong impact on the selection of immigrants, who in turn can affect the host country’s innovation development. This paper examines the effects of the liberalization of migration on the skill composition of immigrants from the EU-15 to Sweden after the inception of the European Economic Area (EEA) in 1994.The results show that the liberalization of migration had a negative effect on the educational profile of new EU-15 immigrants in the short run, but there is no such effect in the long run. Moreover, the liberalization of migration has no systematic effect on the EU-15 immigrants’ probability of becoming an inventor in neither the short nor the long run. These patterns are consistent with the theoretical implication that reduction in migration costs associated with the EEA mainly stimulated migration from the lower end of the education distribution.
https://izajodm.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40176-017-0111-5

Open borders, transport links and local labor markets [Evidence from Sweden]
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"The individual labor market impact of immigration policies are likely to operate through several channels and vary depending on individual and regional characteristics. The 2004 EU enlargement meant that the Swedish labor market immediately became much more accessible for workers and firms from neighboring countries  with substantially lower wage levels."

"The data clearly show that the 2004 EU enlargement implied a greater presence of foreign workers, permanent and temporary, on the Swedish labor market. However, for permanent and registered temporary migrants, there are no strong signs that there was increased clustering in areas close to ferry lines. On the other hand, passenger traffic increased substantially and it is reasonable to think that the economic impact of such a development is to some extent regionally concentrated."

"Our analysis of the impact on individual worker outcomes of being close to the transport links when borders were opened, suggests a small but robust adverse impact in
the order of 1 percent on total annual earnings, as well as on monthly earnings from the main employer. In our treatment areas, the negative effects tend to be greater the closer to the ports one gets. We also present findings which by and large are consistent with previous studies concluding that workers who are closer substitutes to the new competition will also be more affected (see e.g. Bratsberg and Raaum 2011; Pekkala Kerr and Kerr 2011; Dustmann, Frattini and Preston 2012)."

"The effects are to some extent greater among younger people, those with less education, the foreign-born, and in the lower tail of the predicted earnings distribution. Furthermore, we find the clearest negative impact in industries which have seen a greater increase in the presence of EU8 workers, or who are likely to be exposed to greater competition."
https://www.ifau.se/globalassets/pdf/se/2013/wp2013-11-Open-borders-transport-links-and-local-labor-markets.pdf

Living and working in ethnic enclaves: English Language proficiency of immigrants in US metropolitan areas
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Our results confirm that high ethnic concentration in the residential neighbourhood lowers immigrants’ probability of speaking English well. The impact is small, especially for Mexican immigrants. Although still modest, it is generally much larger for Chinese than for Mexican immigrants. We also find some evidence that for Mexicans there is no significant association between language fluency and the size of the minority population at the workplace. In contrast, for Chinese immigrants the relative size of the minority population at the place of work is important, especially for those working in high-skilled occupations.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pirs.12023

November 2010 Immigration Wage Impacts by Origin [Evidence from Norway]
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We estimate the direct partial wage effect for native workers of an immigrant-induced increase in labor supply, using longitudinal records drawn from Norwegian registers and the national skill cell approach of Borjas (2003). Our results show overall negative wage impacts for both men and women. Focusing on differential wage impacts by immigrant origin, we find that immigrant inflows from the neighboring Nordic countries have more negative wage effects than inflows from developing countries. The pattern is consistent with factor demand theory  if  natives  and  other  Nordic citizens are close substitutes.  We also find that impact estimates, particularly for inflows from nearby countries, are sensitive to accounting for selective native attrition and within-skill group variation in demand and supply conditions.
http://www.norface-migration.org/publ_uploads/NDP_02_10.pdf


Job Loss and Immigrant Labor Market Performance [Evidence from Norway
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For immigrant workers in the Norwegian private sector, the probability of job loss in the near future is twice that of native workers. Using corporate bankruptcy for identification, we find that the adverse effects of job loss on future employment and earnings are more than twice as large for immigrant employees.
http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_02_16.pdf


Immigrant labor market integration across admission classes [Evidence from Norway]
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For refugees and family immigrants from low income source countries, we uncover encouraging signs of labor market integration during an initial period upon admission, but after just 5 to 10 years, the integration process goes into reverse with widening immigrant native employment differentials and rising rates of immigrant social insurance dependency. Yet, the analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity within admission class and points to an important role of host†country schooling for successful immigrant labor market integration.
http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_02_17.pdf

The effect of immigration in the retirement age reforms: learning from a numerical example
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This article examines the role played by the low‐skilled immigrant labour force in countries aiming to reform their public pension systems by postponing the pensionable age. With an overlapping‐generations model in continuous time and a fully redistributive pension system, the results of this article suggest that immigration could imply a delay in the pensionable retirement age. Further, we find that the preference for a delay in retirement age increases with the labour productivity of both immigrants and native population.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2397.2007.00481.x


Immigrant Responses to Social Insurance Generosity
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Immigrants from low‐income source countries tend to be underrepresented in employment and overrepresented in social insurance programs. Based on administrative data from Norway, we examine how these gaps reflect systematic differences in the impacts of social insurance benefits on work incentives. Drawing on a benefit formula reform of the temporary disability insurance program, we identify behavioral employment and earnings responses to changes in benefits, and find that responses are significantly larger for immigrants. Among female immigrant program participants, earnings of the male spouse also drop in response to more generous benefits. We uncover stronger behavioral responses among natives with characteristics similar to those of immigrants.
http://ftp.iza.org/dp11482.pdf