Search Results
COVID-19 and Unauthorized Immigration at the Southwest Border
A drop in U.S. enforcement encounters in the spring suggested the pandemic temporarily slowed unauthorized entry attempts, but such encounters have risen in recent months.
Journal Article
What Is Driving Unauthorized Immigration to the U.S.?
Unauthorized immigration to the U.S. has risen and fallen over time. What factors are behind a recent increase in southwestern border crossings?
Working Paper
How do e-verify mandates affect unauthorized immigrant workers?
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 and employment among likely unauthorized female Mexican immigrants. In contrast, the ...
Working Paper
The impact of temporary protected status on immigrants’ labor market outcomes
The United States currently provides Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to more than 300,000 immigrants from selected countries. TPS is typically granted if dangerous conditions prevail in the home country due to armed conflict or a natural disaster. Individuals with TPS cannot be deported and are allowed to stay and work in the United States temporarily. Despite the increased use of TPS in recent years, little is known about how TPS affects labor market outcomes for beneficiaries, most of whom are unauthorized prior to receiving TPS. This study examines how migrants from El Salvador who are ...
Working Paper
Labor Market Effects of Worker- and Employer-Targeted Immigration Enforcement
Hiring someone who is not authorized to work in the United States is illegal, and employers who knowingly hire unauthorized immigrant workers may face civil and criminal penalties. The federal government uses a variety of actions, including worksite raids and paperwork audits, to enforce the prohibition on hiring unauthorized workers. Compliance costs and the possibility of becoming the target of an immigration enforcement action may affect U.S. businesses’ decisions about whom to hire as well as how many workers to employ and how much to pay them, but little previous research has studied ...
Recent Trends in Unauthorized Crossing Attempts at the Southwestern U.S. Border
An analysis compares the level of unauthorized border crossing attempts by different source nations before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Working Paper
Unauthorized Immigration and Fiscal Competition
Reflecting upon recent enforcement policy activism of US states and countries within the EU towards unauthorized workers, we examine the overlap of centralized (federal) and decentralized (state or regional) enforcement of immigration policies in a spatial context. Among other results, we find that if interstate mobility is costless, internal enforcement is overprovided, and border enforcement and local goods are underprovided when regions take more responsibility in deciding policies. This leads to higher levels of unauthorized immigration under decentralization. Interregional migration ...