Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Counterpoint: Reply To Orrenius And Zavodny, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] On the fundamental conclusions, the positions argued by Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny and my own are in essential agreement. The immigration policy of the United States is in dire need of changes. The public concern is, in their words, “driven by the increase in immigration in recent years, particularly of unauthorized immigration.” Our mutual worries pertain to the disproportionately adverse impacts of the immigrant inflow on the nation’s low-skilled work force and the high fiscal burden borne by local communities and states with growing immigrant populations. The differences between the two papers center on the approaches taken to …

The Elusive Goal: The Quest For A Credible Immigration Policy, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] The starting point for all immigration reform efforts must be making the immigration system enforceable. Nothing else makes sense. Otherwise, immigration policy is on a squirrel wheel going nowhere. Illegal immigrants will keep coming in defiance of its terms.

The Career Of Vernon Briggs, Jr.: A Liberal Economist’S Struggle To Reduce Immigration

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] At the conclusion of Cornell’s spring semester in 2007, Briggs ended his 47 years of college teaching. As he retired, Cornell honored him with emeritus status. Since then, he has occasionally given public talks and written articles on the need for immigration reform. He says his work still draws motivation from a principle he left with his students at the end of the last lecture in each of his classes over his entire career: “The mode through which the impossible comes to pass is effort.”

That quote from Justice Oliver Wendell Homes was passed on to Briggs by Michigan …

International Knowledge Flows And Technological Advance: The Role Of International Migration, Kacey N. Douglas

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Immigration is a major aspect of globalization. As the world becomes increasingly integrated, it becomes important to learn more about the effects of immigration on global economic growth. According to Robert Solow’s long run growth model, technological advance is the only form of economic growth sustainable in the long run. Those who contribute to technological advance – highly skilled labor – however, increasingly emigrate from lesser developed to more developed countries in a process known as brain drain. This process has been shown to lead to a permanent increase in income and growth in the host country relative to the …

The Demand For Green Cards, Richard Bruns

All Dissertations

I estimate the demand curve for Legal Permanent Residence in the US, and the government revenues and migrant welfare gains that could be achieved by replacing all or parts of the current immigration system with a Uniform Price Auction. Willingness to pay and welfare are based on the net present value of the difference in income that people earn in the US compared to other countries. I obtain an equilibrium annual demand curve by modeling the dynamics of how pent-up demand for residence responds to the introduction of an auction for residence permits. I separately estimate the demand curves for …

Returns From Self-Employment: Using Human Capital Theory To Compare U.S. Natives And Immigrants, Nikola Popovic

Undergraduate Economic Review

The focus of this paper is to examine the economic returns from self-employment when comparing natives and immigrants. I hypothesize that returns from self-employment will increase with age and education, and that immigrants from China, India, and the Philippines will have higher returns while immigrants from Mexico will have lower returns than natives. I also hypothesize that immigrants with high levels of education will earn more than natives with the same amount of education. The OLS regressions show that human capital variables explain the differences in self-employed income between natives and immigrants, as the literature suggests.

The Economic Downturn Is Accentuated By Labor Market Deficiencies Of U.S. Immigration Policies: A Mandate For Change, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] The depth and length of the economic downturn has already led federal policymakers to implement fiscal policy remedies (i.e., government spending and tax cuts) of unprecedented proportions. These efforts have been intended to enlarge labor demand by stimulating aggregate spending in the lagging economy. Likewise, the Federal Reserve has pursued an expansionary monetary policy (i.e., increasing the money supply) that has driven interest rates to historically low levels and held them there longer than has ever before been imagined. Despite the massive scale of these policy initiatives, they have been of little avail. Throughout this troublesome period, however, the …

The Structural Injustice Of Forced Migration And The Failings Of Normative Theory, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

I propose to criticize two strands of argument - contractarian and utilitarian – that liberals have put forth in defense of economic coercion, based on the notion of justifiable paternalism. To illustrate my argument, I appeal to the example of forced labor migration, driven by the exigencies of market forces. In particular, I argue that the forced migration of a special subset of unemployed workers lacking other means of subsistence (economic refugees) cannot be redeemed paternalistically as freedom or welfare enhancing in the long run. I further argue that contractarian and utilitarian approaches are normatively incapable of appreciating this fact …

Health Perpetuation: The Impact Of Parent Region Of Born On Children Use Of Health Care And Health Status, Monica Garcia-Perez

Economics Faculty Working Papers

Children of immigrants have received increasing attention in recent years because first and secondgeneration children of immigrant families are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. This paper addresses the relationship between child access to and use of health services, and perceived health, and parental nativity after controlling for enabling, predisposing and need variables discussed in the literature. Even though socioeconomic variability and background cannot entirely explain health differences across children, it is important to know the intergenerational effects of health inequalities among different groups. Using data from from the Integrated Health Interview Series from 2000 to 2009, I analyze …

Cultural Assimilation: The Political Economy Of Psychology As An Evolutionary Game Theoretic Dynamic, Atin Basu Choudhary, Dave Cotting

Atin Basu Choudhary

In this paper, we model the interaction between idiocentric and allocentric immigrants in two settings – in a society that is predominantly collectivist and in a society that is predominantly individualist. Immigrants, either allocentric or idiocentric, can also be entity theorists (fixed mindset) or incremental theorists (growth mindset). We use evolutionary game theory to model how the host country cultural environment places selective pressure on the cultures of immigrant populations. This has implications for how well immigrants assimilate into their host country. Our results show: (a) depending on the initial ratio of allocentric and idiocentric immigrants, assimilation is either complete …

Examining The Role Of Immigration In Crime Decline Across United States Cities, Brianna J. Losoya

CMC Senior Theses

Despite previous research in this area, the relationship between immigration and crime in the United States remains ambiguous and surrounded by misconceptions. However, recently, scholars have suggested that, despite the claims of policy-makers and popularized sociological theories, large immigrant concentrations may be linked with lower as opposed to higher crime rates. In the past, research in this area has been imprecise due to it its implementation of cross-sectional analyses for a limited selection of geographic regions. However, through the implementation of time-series procedures and the use of annual data for metropolitan statistical areas during the 2005–2010 periods, the present study …