Immigration Policy and the Rise of Self-Employment among Mexican Immigrants

Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, Magnus Lofstrom and Chunbei Wang

ILR Review, 2022, vol. 75, issue 5, 1189-1214

Abstract: The recent dramatic growth in self-employment among Mexican immigrants in the United States in the past two decades is a puzzling trend, in stark contrast to the stagnant growth or even decline among other demographic groups. The authors propose that the expansion of interior immigration enforcement, a characteristic of the US immigration policy during that time span, contributed to this unique trend by pushing Mexican immigrants into self-employment as an alternative livelihood. Exploiting temporal and geographic variation in immigration enforcement measures from 2005 to 2017, the authors show that tougher enforcement has been responsible for approximately 15% of the rise in Mexican self-employment in the United States.

Keywords: state and local immigration enforcement; undocumented immigrants; Mexican immigrants; self-employment; United States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Related works:
Working Paper: Immigration Policy and the Rise of Self-Employment among Mexican Immigrants (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:75:y:2022:i:5:p:1189-1214

DOI: 10.1177/00197939211057765

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