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On Estimating the Effects of Immigrant Legalization: Do U.S. Agricultural Workers Really Benefit?
Author(s) -
Sampaio Breno,
Sampaio Gustavo Ramos,
Sampaio Yony
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
american journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.949
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1467-8276
pISSN - 0002-9092
DOI - 10.1093/ajae/aat012
Subject(s) - legalization , immigration , wage , economics , demographic economics , identification (biology) , agriculture , empirical research , labour economics , political science , geography , law , philosophy , botany , archaeology , epistemology , biology
The question of whether legalization affects immigrants' economic returns has been the focus of many empirical studies in recent decades. Results have consistently shown that there are significant wage differences between legal and illegal workers. However, the validity of such findings has been questioned, given the lack of good identification strategies to account for omitted variables. In this article we propose using techniques designed to address the issue of selection into treatment based (to some degree) on unobservables. Our results suggest that lower skill levels—not discrimination—explain differences in immigrants' economic outcomes.