IBS Seminar, Hosted by CUPC: The Labor Market Effects of Immigration Enforcement

Hani Mansour, CU Denver, Economics

Title: The Labor Market Effects of Immigration Enforcement.

Abstract: We examine the effects of a large, federal immigration enforcement policy–Secure Communities (SC)–on the labor market outcomes of both citizen and non-citizen workers. 450,000 individuals were deported under SC, 96% of whom were male. We use the county-by-county rollout of SC to estimate a difference-in-difference model. We find that SC decreased the employment of low-skilled male non-citizen workers and negatively impacted the employment of male citizens in middle to high-skill occupations. The evidence suggests this spillover effect onto citizens is due to complementarities in production across skill groups. This is the first quasi-experimental evidence on the labor market effects of immigration enforcement policies on citizens, which is of paramount importance given ongoing immigration policy debates.

Bio: Hani Mansour is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Colorado Denver. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2009. Professor Mansour's research lies at the intersection of labor economics, development economics, and the economics of gender. Currently, he is studying the labor market impacts of U.S immigration enforcement policies, the career trajectories of female politicians in both India and the U.S., and the long-term labor market effects of exposure to female STEM professors. Professor Mansour is an IZA Research Fellow and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics.