Did the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act Reduce the State's Unauthorized Immigrant Population?

Sarah Bohn (), Magnus Lofstrom and Steven Raphael ()
Additional contact information
Sarah Bohn: Public Policy Institute of California
Steven Raphael: University of California, Berkeley

No 5682, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We test for an effect of Arizona’s 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) on the proportion of the state population characterized as foreign-born, as non-citizen, and as non-citizen Hispanic. We use the synthetic control method to select a group of states against which the population trends of Arizona can be compared. We document a notable and statistically significant reduction in the proportion of the Arizona population that is foreign-born and in particular, that is Hispanic noncitizen. The decline observed for Arizona matches the timing of LAWA's implementation, deviates from the time series for the chosen synthetic control group, and stands out relative to the distribution of placebo estimates for the remainder of states in the nation. Furthermore, we do not observe similar declines for Hispanic naturalized citizens, a group not targeted by the legislation. Our results on LAWA's impact on the housing market provide further support for our findings.

Keywords: illegal; unauthorized; undocumented; immigration; Hispanic; Arizona (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J15 J18 J48 J61 J8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - published in: Review of Economics and Statistics, 2014, 96(2), 258-269

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Journal Article: Did the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act Reduce the State's Unauthorized Immigrant Population? (2014)
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