The Assimilation Of Immigrants In The U S Labor Market

This book analyzes the labor market adjustment processes of immigrants in the United States. Newly-arrived immigrants earn less, work fewer weeks, and have higher rates of unemployment than native-born workers. After a period of assimilation, these conditions later converge to, and often surpass, those of native-born workers. The adjustment process traditionally implies greater employment turnover. Newly-arrived immigrant men have lower employment and labor force participation rates than similar native-born American men. Yet differences in unemployment rates are less consistent, and are complicated by shorter periods of unemployment duration for immigrants. Contrary to expectations, recent immigrants are less likely to be unemployed, even after adjusting for a lower duration of unemployment. This is partly because movements in and out of the labor force are high. Lower employment for recent immigrants is best explained by lower labor force participation, while higher unemployment rates are best explained by high rates of labor force entry. All labor force outcomes for immigrants, whether higher or lower upon arrival, converge to native-born norms after a few years of residence.

Since the 1970s, the striking increase in immigration to the United States has been accompanied by a marked change in the composition of the immigrant community, with a much higher percentage of foreign-born workers coming from Latin America and Asia and a dramatically lower percentage from Europe. This timely study is unique in presenting new data sets on the labor force, wage rates, and demographic conditions of both the U.S. and source-area economies through the 1980s. The contributors analyze the economic effects of immigration on the United States and selected source areas, with a focus on Puerto Rico and El Salvador. They examine the education and job performance of foreign-born workers; assimilation, fertility, and wage rates; and the impact of remittances by immigrants to family members on the overall gross domestic product of source areas. A revealing and original examination of a topic of growing importance, this book will stand as a guide for further research on immigration and on the economies of developing countries.

The growing importance of immigration in the United States today prompted this examination of the adequacy of U.S. immigration data. This volume summarizes data needs in four areas: immigration trends, assimilation and impacts, labor force issues, and family and social networks. It includes recommendations on additional sources for the data needed for program and research purposes, and new questions and refinements of questions within existing data sources to improve the understanding of immigration and immigrant trends.

This book presents a series of research articles written over the past four decades by leading economists George J. Borjas and Barry R. Chiswick. Borjas and Chiswick are leading experts on the adjustment of immigrants in their destination country and their impact on the economy. Although they worked separately throughout their careers, and did not always agree, their intellectual interaction has greatly increased understanding of the economic consequences of international migration and immigration policy across developed immigrant receiving countries. This volume brings together their contributions for the first time to demonstrate how public policy issues on immigration have evolved over time. An in-depth analysis of the key issues relating to international migration Foundations of Migration Economics explores the assimilation of immigrants, focusing on the earning changes of immigrants with a longer duration in the host economy; how immigrant networks and ethnic enclaves influence the labor market and linguistic adjustment of immigrants; determinants of language proficiency and to what extent pre-migration skills are effectively employed by the destination; and the effect of immigration on the earnings of earlier waves of immigrants and native-born workers.

This book sheds light on one of the most controversial issues of the decade. It identifies the economic gains and losses from immigrationâ€"for the nation, states, and local areasâ€"and provides a foundation for public discussion and policymaking. Three key questions are explored: What is the influence of immigration on the overall economy, especially national and regional labor markets? What are the overall effects of immigration on federal, state, and local government budgets? What effects will immigration have on the future size and makeup of the nation's population over the next 50 years? The New Americans examines what immigrants gain by coming to the United States and what they contribute to the country, the skills of immigrants and those of native-born Americans, the experiences of immigrant women and other groups, and much more. It offers examples of how to measure the impact of immigration on government revenues and expendituresâ€"estimating one year's fiscal impact in California, New Jersey, and the United States and projecting the long-run fiscal effects on government revenues and expenditures. Also included is background information on immigration policies and practices and data on where immigrants come from, what they do in America, and how they will change the nation's social fabric in the decades to come.

There is a large econometric literature that examines the economic assimilation of immigrants in the United States and elsewhere. On the whole immigrants are seen as atomistic individuals assimilating in a largely anonymous labor market, a view that runs counter to the spirit of the equally large literature on ethnic groups. Here we argue that immigrants assimilate as communities, not just as individuals. The longer the immigrant community has been established the better adjusted it is to the host society and the more the host society comes to accept that ethnic group. Thus economic outcomes for immigrants should depend not just on their own characteristics, but also on the legacy of past immigration from the same country. In this paper we test this hypothesis using data from a 5 percent sample of the 1980, 1990 and 2000 US censuses. We find that history matters in immigrant assimilation: the stronger is the tradition of immigration from a give source country, the better the economic outcomes for new immigrants from that source.