The Birth of Mass Unauthorized Immigration in the United States

Elizabeth U. Cascio, Ethan G. Lewis and Aryen Shrestha

AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2026, vol. 116, 337-343

Abstract: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 imposed, for the first time in US history, annual numerical restrictions on lawful immigration from the Western Hemisphere. This paper introduces and implements a method for estimating highly granular local unauthorized rates in the wake of the surge in Latin American immigration that ensued. Using within-state, cross-county variation in these estimated unauthorized rates for foreign-born Mexican women and multiple comparison groups, we then estimate how maternal legal status affects the health of US-born—and thus US-citizen—children. We find that maternal authorization increases birth weight in the second generation.

JEL-codes: I12 J13 J15 J16 J18 K37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:apandp:v:116:y:2026:p:337-343

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DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20261098

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