The Employment Effects of Mexican Repatriations: Evidence from the 1930's

Abstract

During the period 1929-34 a campaign forcing the repatriation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans was carried out in the U.S. by states and local authorities. The claim of politicians at the time was that repatriations would reduce local unemployment and give jobs to Americans, alleviating the local effects of the Great Depression. This paper uses this episode to examine the consequences of Mexican repatriations on labor market outcomes of natives. Analyzing 893 cities using full count decennial Census data in the period 1930-40, we find that repatriation of Mexicans was associated with small decreases in native employment and increases in native unemployment. These results are robust to the inclusion of many controls. We then apply an instrumental variable strategy based on the differential size of Mexican communities in 1930, as well as a matching method, to estimate a causal "average treatment effect." Confirming the OLS regressions, the causal estimates do not support the claim that repatriations had any expansionary effects on native employment, but suggest instead that they had no effect on, or possibly depressed, their employment and wages.

El Sueño Americano? The Generational Progress of Mexican Americans Prior to World War II

“…The early welfare state was less accessible to Mexican than to European immigrants since citizenship restrictions were more severe in the American Southwest; indeed, there is evidence that some Mexican immigrants were deported for asking for public assistance (Fox 2012). The Great Depression also led to many deportations of first-and second-generation Mexican Americans, while European immigrants were not deported (Lee, Peri, and Yasenov 2017).…”

Re-examining the Philosophical Underpinnings of the Melting Pot vs. Multiculturalism in the Current Immigration Debate in the United States

“…The concerns over wage and employment shortages are certainly not new. As Lee et al (2017) describe, around the Great Depression -between 1929and 1937 -almost half a million people of Mexican descent (many already American citizens) were forcibly deported to Mexico in order to save and create jobs for US-born citizens. Not only did it not work as hoped, it in fact backfired: in those places that sent away most Mexican-Americans, the job markets got smaller and unemployment rose.…”

The Effects of Immigration Quotas on Wages, the Great Black Migration, and Industrial Development

“…Both find a strongly negative impact of immigrants on wages. Concerning immigration restriction policies, and Lee et al (2017) show that the exclusion of Mexican bracero workers in the 1960s and the repatriations of Mexicans in the 1930s had little effects on natives' wages and employment respectively.…”