English skills are highly valuable for today’s immigrants, but has this always been the case? I estimate the premium for English fluency and the rate of language acquisition in the early 20th century US using new linked data on over two hundred thousand immigrants. Few early 20th century immigrants arrived with English proficiency, yet many acquired language skills rapidly after arrival. Based on individual fixed effects, acquiring English fluency was associated with a small upgrade in occupational income. The results suggest that English fluency was less important for economic assimilation in the early 20th century than in recent decades.

We estimate the self-selection of Mexican migrants into and out of the United manifests, which we use to proxy migrant quality and to measure self-selection into migration in 1920. Migrants were positively selected on height compared to the Mexican population. We link these migrants to the 1930 U.S. and Mexican the selection into return migration. Return migrants were not differentially selfselected on height relative to permanent migrants.

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We estimate the effect of age at arrival for immigrant outcomes with a new dataset of arrivals linked to the 1940 U.S. Census. Using within-family variation, we find that arriving at an older age, or having more childhood exposure to the European environment, led to a more negative wage gap relative to the native born. Infant arrivals had a positive wage gap relative to natives, in contrast to a negative gap for teenage arrivals. Therefore, a key determinant of immigrant outcomes during the Age of Mass Migration was the country of residence during critical periods of childhood development.