Out of the Fields? Legalization and Farm Labor After IRCA

Andrea Bernini and Navid Sabet

No 13108, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: How does immigrant legalization reshape the labor market? Combining administrative records on all applicants to the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) with county-level occupational data, we show that IRCA reduced Hispanic farm employment in more exposed counties. On the worker side, the decline fell on farm laborers, while craft and managerial jobs gained employment share. On the farm side, high-exposure counties employed fewer hired workers at higher labor expenses per worker, without a decline in farm sales. The results suggest that the concentration of Hispanic workers in agriculture partly reflected legal barriers to employment in other sectors.

Keywords: immigration; legalization; labor markets; agriculture; farm labor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J43 J61 J68 Q12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13108

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