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Title: The Rise of Low-Skill Immigration in the South

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2004

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Abstract: With the resurgence of large-scale immigration to the United States in recent decades, it is not surprising that the impact of immigration on the countrys social and economic conditions is a topic of significant policy debate. A great deal of research has attempted to document how the U.S. labor market adjusted to the pressures of renewed immigration, with particular attention on the skill composition of the foreign-born workforce (Borjas 1994). This emphasis is justified by the fact that the skill composition of the immigrant population is the key determinant of the social and economic consequences of immigration. In addition to measuring the relative skill endowment of immigrants, existing literature stresses the economic consequences that arise from immigrants typically clustering in a small number of geographic areas (Friedberg and Hunt, 1995; Card, 2001). Figure 1 shows the extent of this clustering. In 1990, 73 percent of working immigrants lived in the six main immigrant-receiving statesCalifornia, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New Jerseywith 32.9 percent living in California alone. However, Figure 1 also shows that this geographic clustering softened in the 1990s. By 2000, the fraction of immigrant workers living in California had declined; the fraction of immigrant workers living in the other immigrant states had remained stable; and the fraction of immigrant workers living in the rest of the country had increased, particularly in southern states where immigrants had not settled historically.This article is a summary of a longer paper, which was supported with a grant from the UK Center for Poverty Research and is available on the UKCPR Discussion Paper Series at http://www.ukcpr.org/Publications/Discussion/Papers.html. In addition to documenting recent trends in settlement patterns the paper examines the impact of this relocation on the skill endowment of the workforce in Southern states and the attendant consequences for wages of immigrants relative to native-born workers. The empirical analysis, which is based on data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) of the decennial censuses from 1960 to 2000, indicates that the recent change in immigrant settlement patterns led to the rise of a sizable foreign-born low-skill workforce in the South, particularly outside of Florida and Texas. This workforce developed as a result of both increased settlement of many newly arrived low-skill immigrants in those states and increased internal immigration of low-skill immigrants from other states to the South. The net result between 1960 and 2000 has been a 20 percentage point reduction in the relative wages of immigrants in the South overall, and a nearly 40 percentage point decline in the southern states excluding Florida and Texas.

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Authors: Borjas, George J.

Periodical (Full): Insights on Southern Poverty

Issue: 2

Volume: 2

Pages: 1, 3-7

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity

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