Studies of the contemporary period for the United States and for Canada have established that the presence of an immigrant population is associated with an increase in trade between the immigrants' host and origin countries. We wish to discover if such a protrade phenomenon was systematically associated with the massive inflow of immigrants to the United States during the 40 years preceding World War I. Applying a gravity model to U.S. imports of 78 commodities from 17 countries at five-year intervals, we find support for a broad pro-import immigrant effect, especially for more fmished and more differentiated goods.

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The protrade effect of immigrants on the bilateral export performance of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia with respect to 87 foreign countries is studied. This effect, which posits that a greater number of immigrants in a host location leads to increased trade between the host and the immigrants' origin country, has been supported in a number of studies. Here, we extend this approach and find that the immigrant effect is greater when the origin country's political system is more corrupt and less important when Spanish or English is the language of the origin country. State-level export data averaged over the 1990-1992 period are used. © 2006 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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"In this paper the settlement patterns of persons from each of eleven different Latin and Caribbean nations who received immigrant status [in the United States] in 1987 are considered. Regression analysis suggests that social and economic forces were important, but that specific factors influenced different nationalities differently. Evidence is also found for a lagged adjustment in the settlement process. Furthermore, the attractive effect of a previously settled migrant stock is estimated to be strong for every nationality."