Immigration Policy and the Skills of Immigrants to Australia, Canada, and the United States

Heather Antecol (), Deborah Cobb-Clark and Stephen Trejo
Additional contact information
Heather Antecol: Claremont McKenna College

No 363, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Census data for 1990/91 indicate that Australian and Canadian immigrants have higher levels of English fluency, education, and income (relative to natives) than do U.S. immigrants. This skill deficit for U.S. immigrants arises primarily because the United States receives a much larger share of immigrants from Latin America than do the other two countries. After excluding Latin American immigrants, the observable skills of immigrants are similar in the three countries. These patterns suggest that the comparatively low overall skill level of U.S. immigrants may have more to do with geographic and historical ties to Mexico than with the fact that skill-based admissions are less important in the United States than in Australia and Canada.

Keywords: immigrant skills; immigration policy; Immigration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J61 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2001-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Published - published in: Journal of Human Resources, 2003, 38 (1), 192-218

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp363.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Immigration Policy and the Skills of Immigrants to Australia, Canada, and the United States (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp363

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().