In this IMR Methods Note, we spotlight the rise in quantitative data availability, measurements, and scholarly investigations of US immigrant and immigration policies (IIPs). To begin, we offer a detailed account of the quantitative data sources, measures, and analytical strategies that have been developed by scholars studying IIPs over the last two decades. We then highlight this scholarship's important advances toward identifying IIPs’ intended, unintended, and spillover effects on immigrant and nonimmigrant populations in the United States. To conclude, we discuss ongoing challenges and future opportunities for deepening research on US IIPs and their psychosocial, behavioral, and health implications. Our review illuminates how data on federal immigration enforcement activities, and on federal, state, and municipal immigrant laws have engendered increasingly sophisticated quantitative studies of the US IIP climate. At the same time, it highlights several dimensions in which existing work stands to be strengthened, including the need for comparisons of newly developed IIP measures and their estimated effects; greater exploration of IIPs’ potentially heterogeneous effects across distinct subpopulations; and more attention to endogeneity, or in other words, the political and demographic processes that give rise to nonrandom variation in how IIPs take shape across space and time.
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The role of states in U.S. immigration: A study of population dynamics and subnational immigration laws
Legislative action on issues of immigration emerged prominently across and within US states throughout the 2000s. The emerging literature on this topic demonstrates the political motivations driving anti-immigrant laws that negatively impact the mobility of Hispanic/Latino and Foreign-born populations across US states. Considerable research identifies the political mechanisms driving restrictive state-level immigration policies. Despite the growth of this scholarly work, the impact of these laws within states requires further study. This paper broadens the approach to the study of restrictive state-level omnibus immigration laws (OILs) using a rich dataset to uncover the effects of these laws on compositional change for undocumented, foreign-born, and Hispanic/Latino populations from 2005 to 2017. Using a quasi-experimental design, I show that by passing omnibus immigration laws, states shape demographic patterns of Foreign-born populations. Specifically, I find that states that pass omnibus immigration laws experience a decrease in undocumented and Foreign-born populations relative to states that did not pass similar laws. Effects are estimated each year after the passage of OILs, providing additional insight into the temporal impact of omnibus immigration laws on the settlement patterns of these groups. I conclude by discussing the theoretical implications of the multiple interior immigration law and policies, specifically at the state level, and their salience in shaping population dynamics across the United States.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1946670
- PAR ID:
- 10561238
- Publisher / Repository:
- Elsevier
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Social Science Research
- Volume:
- 114
- Issue:
- C
- ISSN:
- 0049-089X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 102909
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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