Statistics on U.S. Immigration An Assessment of Data Needs for Future Research (1996) / Chapter Skim
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2 Trends in U.S. Immigration
2 Trends in U.S. Immigration
Pages 18-27
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From page 18... ...
And if the legalizations of previously illegal aliens resulting from the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) are included in the totals, the recent levels exceed all previous highs.
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From page 19... ...
and concomitant declines in the fraction of immigrants of European origin, (4) increasing proportions of immigrants admitted on the basis of occupational and skills criteria rather than national origin or family connection criteria, and (5)
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From page 20... ...
Whereas new research based on more recent and perhaps better data for local labor markets may continue to show that immigration exerts relatively negligible labor market effects, under conditions of slow economic growth the public may well conclude that employment growth has not created sufficient jobs for both natives and new immigrants. That may well be the case even if new evidence indicates that proportionately more jobs are being created with than without immigration.
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From page 21... ...
The current social contract may have been rendered even more fragile by the apparent failure of the 1986 legislation to curb at all, or to slow more than briefly, the flow of illegal aliens to the United States (Bean et al., 1990; Espenshade, 1992~. Another exacerbating circumstance is that consistent evidence continues to mount that immigration exerts its harshest labor market effects on other immigrants (Borjas, 1990~.
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From page 22... ...
First, it is critical to obtain information on nativity, including country of birth and date of immigration for respondents and their parents.3 Such nativity questions would 2Although there are provisions for the ``replenishment,, of agricultural workers in the 1986 IRCA legislation, Martin and Taylor note that sizable illegal immigration of farmworkers continued after 1986. 3Subsequent to the workshop, several federal agencies cosponsored the introduction of a question on parental nativity on the Current Population survey on a regular basis.
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From page 23... ...
Second, increased sample sizes are required for analysis of nationality groups and immigrants classified by labor force characteristics. Current Population Survey data can often be pooled to increase sample sizes, but even larger sample sizes would be required to provide sufficient cases for analyzing generational patterns for specific nationality groups.
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From page 24... ...
Some industries experience strong effects of immigration, with large-scale shifts in their labor force to recently arrived immigrants. For example, citrus pickers in Ventura County, California, and construction workers in Houston, Texas, appear to have been seriously harmed by labor market competition from illegal alien workers.
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From page 25... ...
The Current Population Survey has relatively small sample sizes for most special nationality groups, making even more critical the collection of data on the census. For example, only the Mexican-origin population in the Current Population Survey has observations sufficient for detailed study.5 Third-generation data would also be useful, but their compilation would require collecting data on the country of origin of grandparents, which would complicate questionnaire design considerably.
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From page 26... ...
may therefore vary. If a longitudinal survey of immigrants were feasible, available economic studies demonstrate that it would be critical to design a survey that periodically selects new immigrants to follow over time, noting immigrant status at entry into the United States and all subsequent changes in status and citizenship.6 Such a survey would, of course, increase the cost and complexity over the survey of a single immigrant cohort.
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From page 27... ...
The impact of immigration and illegal flows has varied greatly among metropolitan areas, generating public concerns that are not necessarily common nationwide. For policy purposes, broad research questions should focus on several issues: defining occupational mobility for native-born people and immigrants in order to understand immigration effects; expanding the number of studies that focus on variations in employment conditions and the impact of immigration in metropolitan areas and regions of the country; conducting case studies in order to build up a stock of empirical effects; and sorting out the short-term and long-term effects of immigration.
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