Immigrants in the US labor market: 1940-80

Abstract

Immigration is an increasingly important component of demographic change in the US. The significant role played by immigration in recent years sparked the development of a large literature analyzing a fundamental aspect of the immigrant experience: How do immigrants perform in the US labor market? This paper continues to explore the extent and causes of the decline in immigrant skills during the postwar period. Prior to 1965, immigration to the US was guided by the national-origins quota system. This visa allocation system awarded visas to countries based on the representation of the national origin group in the US population as of 1920. The 1965 Amendments abolished the national-origins formula, thus redistributing visas across source countries, and established a system where visas are mainly given to relatives of US citizens or residents. The empirical analysis shows that a single factor, the changing national origin mix of the immigrant flow, is mainly responsible for the decline in immigrant skills. -from Author