Green Cards and the Location Choices of Immigrants in the United States, 1971-2000

David Jaeger

No 2145, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper documents where immigrants who enter the U.S. with different types of visas (“green cards”) choose to live initially and what determines those location choices. Using population data on immigrants from the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1971 to 2000, matched to data on state characteristics from the Integrated Public Use Microsamples of the U.S. Census, I estimate conditional logit models with the 48 contiguous U.S. states as the choice set. Like previous researchers, I estimate that immigrants have a higher probability of moving to states where individuals from their region of birth represent a larger share of the state population, with relatives of legal permanent residents responding most to this factor. I also find that, in general, immigrants in all admission categories respond to labor market conditions when choosing where to live, but that these effects were the largest for male employment-based immigrants and, surprisingly, refugees.

Keywords: settlement patterns; conditional logit; admission categories; immigrants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C35 J18 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2006-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Published - published in: Research in Labor Economics, 2007, 27, 131-184

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Related works:
Chapter: Green Cards and the Location Choices of Immigrants in the United States, 1971–2000 (2007)
Working Paper: Green Cards and the Location Choices of Immigrants in the United States, 1971-2000 (2006)
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