U.S. Immigration and Policy Brain Waste

Ayoung Kim (), Brigitte S. Waldorf and Natasha T. Duncan

No 262884, Working papers from Purdue University, Department of Agricultural Economics

Abstract: The U.S. H-1B visa for highly-skilled immigrant labor and the accompanying H-4 visa for their dependents leads to structural constraints that exclude dependents from the labor force. Identifying H-1B recipients from the U.S. Census and American Community Surveys, we find that—despite the labor force exclusion—the vast majority of married H-1B recipients is accompanied by their spouses. This is particularly the case for male H-1B recipients, making wives rather than husbands carry most of the burden. Using a matched sample of married immigrants with work authorization, we estimate counterfactual labor force participation probabilities and wages for the sample of dependent H-4 spouses. We find that the policy-imposed labor force exclusion of H-4 spouses leads to substantial losses of spouses’ earnings and annual aggregate productivity loss of over US$2.1 billion.

Keywords: Labor and Human Capital; Political Economy; Research Methods/Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27
Date: 2017-09-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-mig
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:puaewp:262884

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.262884

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