Valerie F. Hunt, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
Introduction: How different domestic governing institutions interact to shape U.S. immigration policy is an under-examined area in political science. To this end, this study turns to the institutional agenda-setting approach for investigating how the courts can and do get involved in the immigration policy process. This study addresses the question “do shifts in the relationship between federal governing institutions influence policy change in U.S. immigration policy during the post World War II era?”
Recent research by institutional agenda-setting scholars in political science have demonstrated empirically that significant changes in policy are, in part, a …

Phillip Martin, University of California – Davis
Introduction: Farmers are pressing for a new guest worker program that would eliminate: (1) the US Department of Labor’s role in certifying the need for foreign workers to fill vacant US farm jobs; (2) the Adverse Effect Wage Rate; and (3) the need to provide free housing to out of area workers (farmers could provide a housing allowance instead of housing). One way to eliminate DOL’s role in certifying a farmer’s need for guest workers is a registry, a computer system to be operated by the Employment Service in each state. ES offices would …

Lynn Stephen, University of Oregon
Introduction: While differences between Mexican migrant households have frequently been discussed in terms of income, race, place or origin, and patterns of migration, little work has focused on stratification within migrant households based on gender, legal status, and age. We cannot assume joint decision-making and internal democracy in the households of migrant laborers. If gender, age, and legal stratification affects the experience of migrants outside the household, why wouldn’t it have an impact inside? In the discussion that follows, the experiences of Oaxacan Mixtecs in Baja California, California, and Oregon are explored to underline the heterogeneity …

Gunter Dietz, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
Introduction: As part of a larger project on the role played by local civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the design and implementation of specific integration policies for migrant communities in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia 1, in this paper the support activities the Andalusian voluntary associations and NGOs have been realizing for the last years in the domain of non-EU immigration are analyzed in the context of increasing xenophobic and muslimophobic tendencies observable inside Andalusian society. Currently, these recently emerging muslimophobic movements, which tend to combine narrowly localist and Spanish nationalist …

Alejandra Castaneda, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies
Emiko Saldívar, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies
Working Paper #34»

Thomas K. Bauer, CEPR, London, Bonn University and Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn
Magnus Lofstrom, Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn
Klaus F. Zimmermann, Bonn University, DIW, Berlin, CEPR London and Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn
Abstract: As in the U.S. and Canada, migration is a controversial issue in Europe. This paper explores the possibility that immigration policy may affect the labor market assimilation of immigrants and hence natives’ sentiments towards immigrants. It first reviews the assimilation literature in economics and the policy approaches taken in Europe and among the traditional immigration countries. Second, a new analysis of …

Enrico A. Marcelli, University of Massachusetts – Boston and Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies – UCLA
Abstract: Research on the spatial distribution of U.S. immigrants has given scant systematic attention to how regional-institutional factors (e.g., welfare availability, cultural affinity, labor market conditions, and the housing market) influence settling initially in the suburbs.  Connecting (1) 1990 PUMS, (2) 1980-90 Dun and Bradstreet, (3) 1983-90 Consolodated Federal Funds Report, and (4) 1990-98 INS data at the PUMA level for the five-country southern California region, this paper finds that (1) although the proportion of recent immigrants having settled initially in suburbs rose during …

Gordon H. Hanson, University of Michigan and National Bureau of Economic Research
Raymond Robertson, Macalester College
Antonio Spilimbergo, International Monetary Fund
Abstract: In this paper, we examine the impact of enforcement of the U.S.-Mexico border on wages in U.S. and Mexican border regions. The U.S. Border Patrol polices U.S. boundaries, seeking to apprehend any undocumented entrants. It concentrates its efforts on the Mexican border. We examine labor markets in border areas of California, Texas, and Mexico. For each region, we have high-frequency data on wages and person hours the U.S. Border Patrol spends policing the border. For a range of empirical specifications and …

Katherine Tegtmeyer Pak, New College of the University of South Florida
Summary: The argument I will present is based on research I conducted primarily over a 16 month period beginning in January 1995, which I published under the title “Foreigners are local citizens, too” in a book edited by Mike Douglass and Glenda Roberts, Japan and Global Migration. This paper updates that argument with data I gathered during a short trip back to Japan this past summer. I also want to share some new thoughts I have regarding the consequences of Japanese cities’ responses to international migration for Japanese notions of …

Rainer Winkelmann, Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn
Abstract: The paper provides an analysis of the recent immigration history of New Zealand and Australia. It starts with a description of the quantitative dimension of immigration: how many immigrants entered the two countries, and what was the contribution of external migration to population growth. Next, similarities and differences in the current immigration policies are studied. Finally, an attempt is made to evaluate policy outcomes using empirical evidence of immigrants arriving in the 1990s.
Working Paper #29»