The Effects of Undocumented Immigration on the Employment Outcomes of Low-Skill Natives in the United States

Abstract

Although international immigrations’ impacts on domestic workers are well studied in the United States, data paucity means most researchers have yet to isolate the specific effects of undocumented immigration. Despite limited empirical evidence, many policymakers presuppose undocumented immigrants adversely impact native workers to justify stringent immigration laws. In this paper, we examine the validity of this supposition, offering two contributions. First, we create annual, state-level estimates of the U.S. undocumented population for the period 1994 to 2010 by emulating a methodology adopted by notable demographers. Second, we incorporate these estimates into a fixed-effect, dynamic model to isolate how undocumented immigrants impact low-skill native labor force participation rates and unemployment rates. Overall, we find the total number of international immigrants has a relatively small impact on both. Omitting undocumented immigrants indicates that documented immigrants alone have no significant impact on natives. However, the effects of undocumented immigrants are themselves statistically indistinguishable from the impact of all immigrants. This suggests that neither immigrant group separately has substantive impacts on low-skill natives.