Immigration, Wages, & Ethnicity: An examination of immigration's effect on the wages of native Hispanic workers
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Author
Churchill, Brandyn
Liu, Oliver
Ton, Minh
Subject
Economics 203
Discrimination in employment
Immigrants
Hispanic Americans -- Employment
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The supporting data set can be replicated at the Minnesota Population Center's website, https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml Brandyn Churchill and Minh Ton are members of the Class of 2014 of Washington and Lee University. Oliver N. Liu is a member of the Class of 2015 of Washington and Lee University. Current literature is mixed on immigration’s effect on native wages in the United States. Some researchers find positive wage effects, while others find mixed or negative effects. The lack of consensus is due to variance in sampling, assumptions, and functional forms. This paper seeks to determine what relationship, if any, exists between immigration and wages for native-born Hispanics. We find that the ratio of immigrants to the labor force is a statistically significant variable at the national level, as well as for native Hispanics and white non-Hispanic workers. However, this variable translates to very few changes in the wages for these groups. This suggests that there is some other factor shielding natives from immigration’s effect, such as language ability. Brandyn Churchill