However, most legislative proposals go beyond legalizing undocumented workers and instead push for putting undocumented immigrants on a pathway to citizenship. Citizenship has additional boosts on the efficiency and productivity of workers that go beyond those associated with legalization. This simulation assumes a percent takeup rate of the eligible individuals for legalization and naturalization. In this sense, the simulation shows the full potential of such a program, if all those eligible pursue it.
Another effect that must be considered is the additional postsecondary schooling that undocumented immigrants, namely young undocumented immigrants, would acquire as a result of the incentives from legalization. Research on legalization, along with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals DACA , shows that such policies have a positive impact on educational attainment.
This model considers additional investments in education that undocumented immigrants would make within the first 10 years of legalization, generating economic returns to their human capital above and beyond the increased wages and productivity. The model includes provisions that all undocumented immigrants who are younger than 30 and still enrolled in school will complete two additional years of schooling, on average, after legalization and before naturalization.
Following the literature, the model assumes that the their additional schooling will have a positive effect on the productivity of other workers. This will increase by 10 percent for one extra year of average postsecondary schooling among the employed. Aside from education, legalization and a pathway to citizenship would result in more on-the-job learning, especially in terms of language, and ultimately an increase in efficiency.
Research estimates that lower levels of English proficiency among undocumented immigrants lead to wages that are 5 percent lower compared with those of documented immigrants. Calculations are based on a model of economic growth with documented and undocumented workers, where human capital depends on labor effectiveness and schooling, and total factor productivity depends on schooling due to a positive externality.
This is based on chapters 4 and 5 of Charles I. The long run also includes the additional schooling effect, the on-the-job skills effects, the positive schooling externality, and the response of business investments. The wage earnings of American workers will not change in the short run, and total wage income will only increase due to higher wages of the legalized immigrants.
As average productivity increases, there will be higher demand for labor, assuming an upward sloping labor supply for the group of other American workers and an elasticity of supply around 0. The initial universe is individuals who were born abroad and are not citizens. The table shows the number of weighted observations subtracted in each round and the total number of weighted observations remaining.
Table 2 shows summary statistics comparing characteristics of the U. Hourly wages are calculated as yearly wages divided by the number of weeks worked last year times the number of hours usually worked in a week.
The authors trim the top and bottom 0. The wage penalty for undocumented immigrants is estimated considering the population of all foreign-born adults and regressing the logarithm of their wages on a set of demographic characteristics, including controls for survey year, age, educational attainment, state of residence, years since migration, and birthplace. The authors include a dummy equal to 1 if the individual is undocumented.
The coefficient on this dummy is the estimated wage penalty, in log points, for being undocumented. Silva Mathema. Philip E. Economic Growth Chapters Chapters. In this article. InProgress Stay updated on our work on the most pressing issues of our time. Parameters used to model impacts of legalization and citizenship for the undocumented.
Short- to medium-run effects Short-run effects derive mainly from increased productivity of legalized workers. Long-run effects Additional effects need to be considered in the longer run of these policy implementations.
Scenario 1: All undocumented immigrants Who is eligible in this scenario? Measuring the undocumented immigrant community While undocumented individuals are not explicitly identified in U. How do these estimates differ from other CAP analyses? How has the coronavirus pandemic affected the employment rate of undocumented immigrants?
Figure 1. Measuring the impact of legalization and citizenship on wages and human capital A crucial component of estimating the economic outcomes that result from putting undocumented immigrants on a pathway to legal status or citizenship is assessing the impact in two areas: their wages and education attainment or specialized on-the-job training and skills.
Wages The impact of legalization and citizenship on the wages and productivity of undocumented workers has been studied extensively in the field, particularly after the Immigration Reform and Control Act of IRCA —the last major overhaul of the U. Educational attainment or on-the-job learning Another effect that must be considered is the additional postsecondary schooling that undocumented immigrants, namely young undocumented immigrants, would acquire as a result of the incentives from legalization.
Model components Calculations are based on a model of economic growth with documented and undocumented workers, where human capital depends on labor effectiveness and schooling, and total factor productivity depends on schooling due to a positive externality.
Table 1. Table 2. Eligibility provisions Individuals eligible under the Dream provisions of the American Dream and Promise Act include those who arrived in the United States before , were 18 years old or younger at arrival, and who either are enrolled in school, have a high school diploma, or are in the military.
In the s, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and the UK used regularization programs to address unauthorized migration that occurred after guest worker programs were terminated [3]. Meanwhile, countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, which experienced waves of irregular migration following periods of economic growth, enacted multiple programs in the s, s, and s [2].
In total, between and over 68 programs were enacted in Europe, leading to an estimated 4. These programs vary on the extent to which they focus on certain migrants from certain countries as well as the level of access they grant to labor markets and government services. For example, prior to the numerous regularization programs in Spain had proof of long-term residency as the main requirement. However, the reform was pitched as a program to regularize workers rather than residents, and thus tied authorization to having an employment contract [2].
Irrespective of the many differences, a policy in one country can have a direct impact on others, because the EU allows free movement of labor within its borders. In the US, legalization programs have been fewer, but of a larger scale. Similar to many European countries, the US experienced increases in inflows of undocumented economic migrants in the s. The act included two amnesty programs granting almost three million immigrants legal permanent residency and a path to citizenship.
This makes it one of the largest, one-time authorization programs ever enacted. The first program, a general amnesty program, granted legal permanent residency status to immigrants with long-term ties to the US. The second program was population-specific, primarily aimed at agricultural workers, and allowed for shorter stays in the US.
Introduced in , it offered to adjust the legal status of approximately 2. While this act is unlikely to pass in the near future, states have granted their own in-state tuition waivers to undocumented youths, and in President Obama issued an executive order to grant Deferred Action to Childhood Arrivals DACA.
Those granted DACA status were not at risk of deportation and were granted temporary work authorization status. As countries consider introducing new programs, it is important to review the possible mechanisms through which legalization affects newly authorized immigrants, their labor market competitors, and government budgets. The impact of legalization programs differs from that of immigrant inflows because these programs do not change the number of immigrants in a country but rather their status.
If legalization programs do not incentivize new migration flows, the total number of foreign-born individuals should remain the same. It is unclear, however, what will happen to the total supply of workers in a given market as labor force participation rates for newly authorized immigrants could change.
The supply of workers could increase if some previously non-working immigrants join the labor market after being legalized, or decrease if others stop working or work less thanks to higher wages and access to government benefits.
While changes in total labor supply are difficult to predict, it is likely that the specific labor market in which newly authorized immigrants work would change as a result of increased legalization. Work authorization means that previously unauthorized individuals can move from informal labor markets, where they may face lower wages and bargaining power, to formal ones, where they earn higher wages, gain access to benefits, and provide a greater tax contribution. The result is that the labor supply in formal labor markets likely expands while the supply in informal markets likely shrinks.
These shifts should have positive wage effects for newly authorized immigrants, as formal wages tend to be higher than informal ones. Labor demand also may be affected by authorization and accompanying policies, like increased enforcement of work authorization. In informal markets the demand for labor could fall, as a greater emphasis on compliance makes hiring informal workers more costly.
By the same token, demand for labor could also fall in formal markets as compliance costs increase. However, lower turnover among now legal workers could lower hiring costs, thereby raising demand. Figure 1 and Figure 2 depict the formal and informal labor markets where newly authorized immigrants, previously authorized immigrants, and native-born workers are perfect substitutes for each other.
Formal wages fall from W 2 to W 2. Total labor employment rises from L 1 to L 2. The number of immigrant workers rises and is equal to the rightward shift of the labor supply curve, or L 2 — L 3. With an upward-sloping labor supply curve, employment of native-born workers falls from L 1 to L 3 because only L 3 native-born workers are willing to work at the new, lower wage, W 2.
Labor demand D also likely shifts left, as firms respond to the government's increased vigilance of work authorizations. The wage effects are indeterminant, but likely not to rise dramatically. What happens to native-born workers and remaining unauthorized immigrants partially depends on whether or not they move or alter their labor supply in response to a change in the overall supply of authorized workers. Absent any response, the basic neoclassical model predicts the formal wages of native-born and previously authorized workers would fall in the education and experience groups in which legalizations are concentrated.
If, however, these groups respond by moving to areas less affected by the authorization programs, the labor supply shift will be smaller, leading to more muted changes in wages for those who remain. It is also possible that native-born and previously authorized immigrants respond by moving into informal markets, despite the higher costs.
This would mute the wage effects in informal markets as well. In sum, the overall change in employment and wages for all groups as a result of legalization depends on several factors. The first is the size of formal labor markets relative to informal ones. The second is the mobility of the native-born and previously authorized population. Thus, the actual impact on wages and employment is an empirical question. Overall, studies of authorization find mixed effects on earnings, largely depending on the country and program being studied.
To be sure, the debate over immigration reform has important legal, moral, social, and political dimensions. Providing or denying legal status or citizenship to the undocumented has implications for getting immigrants in compliance with the law, affects whether or not immigrant families can stay in their country of choice, and determines whether they have the opportunity to become full and equal members of American society. But legal status and citizenship are also about the economic health of the nation as a whole.
As our study demonstrates, legal status and a road map to citizenship for the unauthorized will bring about significant economic gains in terms of growth, earnings, tax revenues, and jobs—all of which will not occur in the absence of immigration reform or with reform that creates a permanent sub-citizen class of residents. We also show that the timing of reform matters: The sooner we provide legal status and citizenship, the greater the economic benefits are for the nation.
The logic behind these economic gains is straightforward. As discussed below, legal status and citizenship enable undocumented immigrants to produce and earn significantly more than they do when they are on the economic sidelines.
The resulting productivity and wage gains ripple through the economy because immigrants are not just workers—they are also consumers and taxpayers.
They will spend their increased earnings on the purchase of food, clothing, housing, cars, and computers. That spending, in turn, will stimulate demand in the economy for more products and services, which creates jobs and expands the economy. This paper analyzes the year economic impact of immigration reform under three scenarios. The first scenario assumes that legal status and citizenship are both accorded to the undocumented in The second scenario assumes that the unauthorized are provided legal status in and are able to earn citizenship five years thereafter.
The third scenario assumes that the unauthorized are granted legal status starting in but that they are not provided a means to earn citizenship—at least within the year timeframe of our analysis. Under the first scenario—in which undocumented immigrants are granted legal status and citizenship in —U. Within five years of the reform, unauthorized immigrants would be earning This means that they would also be contributing significantly more in federal, state, and local taxes.
Under the second scenario—in which undocumented immigrants are granted legal status in and citizenship five years thereafter—the year cumulative increase in U. On average over the 10 years, this immigration reform would create , jobs per year. Given the delay in acquiring citizenship relative to the first scenario, it would take 10 years instead of five for the incomes of the unauthorized to increase Finally, under the third scenario—in which undocumented immigrants are granted legal status starting in but are not eligible for citizenship within 10 years—the cumulative gain in U.
The income of the unauthorized would be These immigration reform scenarios illustrate that unauthorized immigrants are currently earning far less than their potential, paying much less in taxes, and contributing significantly less to the U. They also make clear that Americans stand to gain more from an immigration reform policy of legalization and citizenship than they do from one of legalization alone—or from no reform at all.
Finally, the magnitude of potential economic gains depends significantly on how quickly reforms are implemented. The sooner that legal status and citizenship are granted to the unauthorized, the greater the gains will be for the U. Numerous studies and government data sets have shown that positive economic outcomes are highly correlated with legal status and citizenship. Large and detailed government datasets—such as the U.
Within the immigrant community, economic outcomes also vary by legal status. A study done by George Borjas and Marta Tienda found that prior to Mexican immigrant men legally in the United States earned 6 percent more than unauthorized Mexican male immigrants. Katherine Donato and Blake Sisk, for example, found that between and , the average hourly wage of Mexican immigrants legally in the United States was In addition, a U.
Department of Labor study—based on a carefully constructed and large longitudinal survey of the nearly 3 million unauthorized immigrants who were granted legal status and given a road map to citizenship under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of —found that these previously undocumented immigrants experienced a Studies have also reported that citizenship provides an added economic boost above and beyond the gains from legalization.
Manuel Pastor and Justin Scoggins, for instance, found that even when controlling for a range of factors such as educational attainment and national origin, naturalized immigrants earned 11 percent more than legal noncitizens. There are several reasons why legalization and citizenship both raise the incomes of immigrants and improve economic outcomes.
Providing a road map to citizenship to undocumented immigrants gives them legal protections that raise their wages. It also promotes investment in the education and training of immigrants that eventually pays off in the form of higher wages and output; grants access to a broader range of higher-paying jobs; encourages labor mobility which increases the returns on the labor skills of immigrants by improving the efficiency of the labor market such that the skillsets of immigrants more closely match the jobs that they perform; and makes it more possible for immigrants to start businesses and create jobs.
Each of these reasons is explained in more detail below. Legalization allows the newly authorized to invoke the numerous employment rights that they previously could not benefit from—but were in most cases entitled to—due to their constant fear of being deported. Earning LPR status under this program would be more expensive than earning the work permit presented in the first option, and it would take much longer.
The legalization provisions of the comprehensive immigration reform bill could serve as a model for this citizenship tier. This compromise will satisfy many conservatives because most illegal immigrants would choose the cheaper path toward a work permit rather than citizenship, if naturalization rates after the Reagan amnesty are any guide. By , only about 41 percent of those legalized under the amnesty had naturalized.
Many liberals will be satisfied because illegal immigrants who desire citizenship can earn it, while the majority who only want work rights will be able to work and live in the United States legally at a much lower cost.
There have been successful attempts to legalize immigrants in the past. Reforming and expanding elements of these past legalization attempts would go some of the way toward reducing the illegal immigrant population. Illegal immigrants who entered the United States prior to would have been able to apply for legal status under the immigration reform bill debated in Congress, assuming they met the other requirements. Congress could expand these provisions to guarantee that the illegal immigrant population will not grow unmanageably larger over time.
The law currently provides for cancellation of removal deportation for illegal immigrant spouses, parents, and minor children of U. The law limits the number of cancellations in a year to no more than four thousand. Unfortunately, this pathway is too narrow for most otherwise eligible illegal immigrants to access because of the onerous standard of exceptional and extremely unusual hardship. Because this high standard renders this option unavailable to almost all illegal immigrants who have immediate family who are U.
There were lower standards for stopping a deportation in the past that could be reapplied today. The United Kingdom also provides an excellent example. Limited leave to remain provides for two and a half years of temporary residence without access to public benefits, but immigrants may renew it. Congress should also consider a suspension of deportation policy for any illegal immigrant—even those without U.
A rolling legalization policy would put a hard limit on the size of the illegal immigrant population.
0コメント