Fourteen states and the District of Columbia allow unauthorized immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. Using variation in the timing and location of these policy changes, we show these Unauthorized Immigrant License Polices (UILPs) are associated with a 1% increase in both the number of licensed drivers and liability insurance coverage, although we do not document a statistically significant relationship with auto insurance claims. Nor do we detect a significant relationship between UILPs and the number of miles driven, vehicle registrations, air quality, or travel behaviors. Overall, our results are consistent with UILPs licensing unauthorized immigrants who were already driving.

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Raising the minimum wage has been advanced as complementary policy to comprehensive immigration reform to improve low‐skilled immigrants’ economic well‐being. While adverse labor demand effects could undermine this goal, existing studies do not detect evidence of negative employment effects. We re‐investigate this question using data from the 1994 to 2016 Current Population Survey and conclude that minimum wage increases reduced employment of less‐educated Hispanic immigrants, with estimated elasticities of around –0.1. However, we also find that the wage and employment effects of minimum wages on low‐skilled immigrants diminished over the last decade. This finding is consistent with more restrictive state immigration policies and the Great Recession inducing outmigration of low‐skilled immigrants, as well as immigrants moving into the informal sector. Finally, our results show that raising the minimum wage is an ineffective policy tool for reducing poverty among immigrants.