Immigration Facts

By Giovanni Peri and Reem Zaiour

GMC Director Giovanni Peri and GMC Grad Student Affiliate Reem Zaiour produced an Econofact regarding the increase of Central American adult migrants to the United States, which corresponds to the increase in immigrant minors and the overall migration of families. In general, the majority of Central American minor migrants moved to the United States with their parents or were reunited with them in the past nine years.

By Giovanni Peri and Reem Zaiour

An Econofact memo by GMC Director Giovanni Peri and GMC Graduate Student Affiliate Reem Zaiour notes the effect of travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 Pandemic on immigrant arrivals in the United States. The data suggests that there has been two million fewer migrants than expected based on previous trends, where one million of those would have been college educated. This drop in foreign labor supply evidently seems to be a contributor of the current job shortage and could remain as an impediment as employment recovery as the economy heats up.

By Konrad Franco, Caitlin Patler and Keramet Reiter

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) imprisoned a high record of up to 52,000 people per day in 2019, yet information on conditions of confinement is extremely limited. One of the least understood practices is solitary confinement, leading scholars to describe the practice as a black box within a black box. Being placed in solitary confinement often means an immigrant is locked in a windowless cell, alone for 22-23 hours each day, sometimes for weeks or months at a time, and often with long-term negative effects.

By Zachariah Rutledge

Over the past few decades, immigrants from Mexico and Central America have made significant progress in the rates at which their employment and earnings converge towards the long-run equilibrium when compared to similar U.S. natives.  In fact, Latin American immigrants have consistently been able to achieve employment rates that are higher than their native counterparts, revealing that they arrive in the U.S. with a high propensity to work and do not expect to live off of social services.

By Giovanni Peri and Justin C. Wiltshire

With states enforcing ‘social-distancing’ measures and curtailing individual mobility in order to limit the diffusion of the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic, local authorities have been pushed to identify those sectors and workers who are “essential” in this time of emergency.  Often overlooked, and what we demonstrate in this Immigration Fact, is that immigrants (foreign-born individuals) and likely-undocumented immigrants are widely over-represented (sometimes by a factor of 2 or 3) among these “essential workers”.

By Bradford Jones

By the mid 1990s, most unauthorized crossings occurred in the El Paso and San Diego Sectors.  To decrease migrant traffic in these sectors, the US Border Patrol implemented Operations Hold-the-Line (El Paso) and Gatekeeper (San Diego).  The reasoning was if traffic was stopped here, unauthorized crossing would be curtailed because migrants would have to make a longer and more dangerous trek to enter.  Thus, the policy of “prevention-by-deterrence” was ushered in, the concept being that if unauthorized migration could be made so difficult, migrants would not enter.  Instead, a “funnel effect” was created such that migrants started crossing through the more dangerous Tucson Sector. 

By Giovanni Peri and Vasil Yasenov

One way to analyze the local labor markets’ long-run success is to look at their average wage growth. Identifying factors that are associated with strong wage growth and labor demand is particularly important as (i) wages are the largest component of households’ income and (ii) during the last 40 years the median US worker has experienced virtually no earnings growth.

By Santiago Pérez

A defining feature of the “American Dream” is the view that even immigrants who come to the United States with few resources have a real chance at improving their children’s prospects. We use millions of father-son pairs to answer two related questions: (1) Are children of immigrants more likely to move up in the economic ladder than children of natives from similar economic backgrounds? (2) Are children of contemporary immigrants more or less likely to move up in the economic ladder than children of immigrants from 100 years ago? 

By Giovanni Peri

If one considers the very basic statistics relative to immigration in the United States over the last 20 years, there are two notable pieces of data. The first is the significant decline in total net immigration, relative to the 1990’s and the slowing of its role in driving the growth of US population in working age (18-65). The second is that the net immigration rate among less educated low-skilled individuals has declined substantially from year 2000. In the latest decade, net immigration of low skilled workers has actually been negative, implying more people in that category leaving the US than entering it.