The Labor Market Impact of State-Level Immigration Legislation Targeted at Unauthorized Immigrants

In this paper, we evaluate the impact of state immigration legislation targeting employment on the employment levels, population, and employment rates for working age natives and immigrants. Our quasi-experimental estimator relies on comparing average outcome levels for the six months before the legislation passes to the six months following passage in states enacting such laws relative to states within the comparable census regions that do not pass immigration legislation. We present separate estimates for working-age adults by race/ethnicity, by nativity, and by citizenship status. We find significant declines in state employment, population, and in many instances, employment rates for Hispanics in states that pass such legislation. The adverse impacts of these laws are generally concentrated on non-citizens from Latin American countries of all education levels, a group that loses both employment as well as population in adopting states relative to non-adopting states. We also observe relative employment declines among foreign-born Hispanic citizens with a high school degree or less, but no corresponding population loss. This result is sensible, as these immigrants have no legal reason to leave states adopting these laws, yet are perhaps most likely to be confused with undocumented immigrants by employers. When we alter the definition of the pre-period to the six-months preceding legislative enactment, we find similar relative declines in employment and population for Latinos. However, with this alternative timing, the adverse patterns are concentrated on native-born Latinos. In all models, we find little evidence of an adverse impact of these laws on the employment, population, and employment rates of non-Latino racial/ethnic groups.