Local Immigration Enforcement and Local Economies

Abstract

We examine the impacts of a locally enforced immigration program—287(g)—on private employer reports to the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Using contiguous‐county pairs to account for time‐varying local economic shocks, we identify impacts on immigrant‐intensive industries that are robust to prepolicy time trends, implementation timing, and the exclusion of pairs with large prepolicy differences. Reported employment was 4 percent higher in manufacturing, but 7–10 percent lower in administrative services. These results are consistent with adverse labor‐supply shocks, and, to a lesser extent, a decline in labor demand for locally produced goods and services.

Immigrants Equilibrate Local Labor Markets: Evidence from the Great Recession

“…Since the dependent variable is measured as the within-city change, this control allows for differential growth trends based on a city's traditional enclave status. Columns (3) and (4) add indicators for cities in states that enacted anti-immigrant employment legislation or new 287(g) agreements allowing local officials to enforce federal immigration law, based on the immigration policy database in Bohn and Santillano (2012). 68 In Column (4), all of these controls enter with a negative sign, as expected.…”

“…We control for the Mexican-born share of each city's population in 2000, which accounts for the potential decline in the value of traditional enclaves discussed by Card and Lewis (2007). We also add indicators for cities in states that enacted anti-immigrant employment legislation or new 287(g) agreements allowing local officials to enforce federal immigration law, based on the immigration policy database in Bohn and Santillano (2012). Table 3 presents population elasticities analogous to Table 2, with the addition of these controls.…”

“…Bohn and Santillano (2012) and Watson (2013) show that local 287(g) policies also affected immigrants’ location choices. …”

Do State Employment Eligibility Verification Laws Affect Job Turnover?

“…Pham and Van () examine employment shares, so employment must increase in some industries if it falls in other industries. However, Bohn and Santillano () similarly find inconsistent effects of an immigration enforcement program, 287(g), across immigrant‐intensive industries using county‐level data. Employment levels fell in administrative services (e.g., landscaping, janitorial work, and maintenance) but rose in manufacturing.…”

Denying Citizenship: Immigration Enforcement and Citizenship Rights in the United States

“…For example, news of either type of formal denial that travels through immigrant social networks may dampen the willingness of others in the network to seek naturalization. Effective denials may impose economic, social, and psychological costs on wider communities in which the directly impacted U.S. citizens are members (for research on community effects of immigration enforcement, see, e.g., Pham &Van, 2010;Bohn & Santillano, 2017). In sum, both enforcement and citizenship researchers must unpack not only direct, but also indirect, downstream effects of citizenship denials that may be far-reaching in their nature and scope.…”