Cross, Harry E., and James A. Sandos. Across the Border: Rural Development in Mexico and Recent Migration to the United States. Berkeley: Institute for Government Studies, University of California Press, 1981, xx + 198 pp., $‐12.00

Illegal Immigration and Immigration Control

“…The statistical evidence does not indicate that illegal aliens receive wages that are lower than those of other workers with comparable levels of skill (for example, Chiswick, 1988;Massey, 1987). Thus, the low wages of illegal aliens are generally the consequence of their skill levels and not of "exploitation."…”

“…Skill levels also provide differential incentives for illegal migration (Chiswick, 1988). Individuals with occupational characteristics that would reveal their illegal status, such as the need to acquire a license or show other credentials, are less likely to migrate.…”

“…In addition, family separation which increases to-and-fro migration discourages the illegal migration of workers with firm-specific and country-specific skills, and discourages the acquisition of these skills by those who become illegal aliens. Evidence from Mexico indicates that it is not the least skilled and the poorest in Mexico who migrate to the United States; some skill and some resources are needed for a successful northward migration (Cross and Sandos, 1981). However, those who do migrate are very low skilled by U.S. standards.…”

“…2, 1988). A study of Mexican illegal aliens working in the 1978 harvest season in Oregon estimated that they earned six times what they could have earned in Mexico, and even after deducting the costs of the seasonal migration (including payments to alien smugglers) and certain additional expenses for living in the United States, their net U.S. earnings were three times their Mexican alternative (Cuthbert and Stevens, 1981). As has been shown for the United States (Wright, 1987), large regional wage differentials sometimes persist far longer than might be implied by simple models of factor price equalization.…”

“…As a result, knowledge of the illegal alien population is based largely on piecemeal studies of selected segments of the population. Enough such studies have been done, however, to suggest a profile for illegal aliens (see, for example, Chiswick, 1988, and the references therein).…”