The migration response to the Legal Arizona Workers Act

Abstract

The 2008 Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) requires all public and private employers to authenticate the legal status of their workers using the federal employment verification system known as E-Verify. With LAWA, Arizona became the first state to have a universal mandate for employment verification. While LAWA targets unauthorized workers, most of whom are Latino immigrants, other groups could experience LAWA’s effects, such as those who share households with undocumented workers. In addition, employers may seek to minimize their risk of LAWA penalties by not hiring those who appear to them as more likely to be unauthorized, such as naturalized Latino immigrants and US-born Latinos. Existing research has found a reduction in foreign-born Latino employment and population in response to LAWA. This paper asks a different question: have groups that are most likely to be affected by the law migrated to other states? We find a significant and sustained increase in the internal outmigration rate from Arizona of foreign-born, noncitizen Latinos - the group most likely to include the unauthorized - after the passage of LAWA. There was no significant LAWA internal migration response by foreign-born Latino citizens. US-born Latinos showed some signs of a LAWA-induced internal migration response after the law went into effect, but it is not sustained. The results indicate that local and state immigration policy can alter the settlement geography of the foreign born. This leads us to speculate about how immigrant settlement may adjust in the coming years to the intersecting geographies of post-recession economic opportunity and tiered immigration policies.

Do restrictive omnibus immigration laws reduce enrollment in public health insurance by Latino citizen children? A comparative interrupted time series study

“…There is some evidence that, during the study period, both the recession (Ellis et al, 2014a) and state and local immigration laws (Ellis et al, 2016, 2014b; Watson, 2013) influenced where immigrants settled within the US. Low-skilled immigrants—those most likely to be undocumented—disproportionately relocated to states with less restrictive laws after omnibus law passage (Bohn et al, 2014; Ellis et al, 2016, 2014b).…”

“…Low-skilled immigrants—those most likely to be undocumented—disproportionately relocated to states with less restrictive laws after omnibus law passage (Bohn et al, 2014; Ellis et al, 2016, 2014b). If this occurred in our sample, the composition of the state’s Latino population would have shifted toward a smaller proportion of children in policy states with undocumented parents, which could bias the results for children of noncitizen parents toward zero.…”

Do state work eligibility verification laws reduce unauthorized immigration?

“…One study suggests that many of these immigrants left the USA altogether rather than moved to other states, perhaps because they were deported (Amuedo-Dorantes and Lozano 2014). Other research, however, indicates an increase in migration from Arizona to other states (Ellis et al 2014). It is unclear whether a later anti-unauthorized immigration law (SB 1070) passed in Arizona in 2010 further reduced the state's population of unauthorized immigrants.…”

Papers Please: Immigration, Enforcement, and Remmitances

“…(Donato and Sisk, 2012). The internal outmigration (movement from one state to another) rate for foreign-born, noncitizen Latinos saw an increase during this period (Ellis et al, 2014). This group can be analyzed as a proxy because it is the group most likely to account for unauthorized immigrants.…”