TY - JOUR AU - Borjas,George J. AU - Freeman,Richard B. AU - Katz,Lawrence F. TI - Searching for the Effect of Immigration on the Labor Market JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 5454 PY - 1996 Y2 - February 1996 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5454 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5454.pdf N1 - Author contact info: George J. Borjas Harvard Kennedy School 79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617/495-1393 Fax: 617/495-9532 E-Mail: gborjas@harvard.edu Richard B. Freeman NBER 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617/868-3900 Fax: 617/868-2742 E-Mail: freeman@nber.org Lawrence F. Katz Department of Economics Harvard University Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617/495-5148 Fax: 617/613-1245 E-Mail: lkatz@harvard.edu AB - We compare two approaches to analyzing the effects of immigration on the labor market and find that the estimated effect of immigration on U.S. native labor outcomes depends critically on the empirical experiment used. Area analyses contrast the level or change in immigration by area with the level or change in the outcomes of non- immigrant workers. Factor proportions analyses treat immigrants as a source of increased national supply of workers of the relevant skill. Cross-section comparisons of wages and immigration in the 1980 and 1990 Censuses yield unstable results casting doubt on the validity of these calculations. Analyses of changes over time for various education groups within regions give negative estimated immigration effects, which increase in magnitude the wider the area covered. Factor proportions calculations show that immigration was somewhat important in reducing the relative pay of U.S. high school dropouts during the 1980s, while immigration and trade contributed much more modestly to the falling pay of high school equivalent workers. The different effects of immigration on native outcomes in the area and factor proportions methodologies appear to result from the diluting effect of native migration flows across regions and failure to take adequate account of other regional labor market conditions in area comparisons. ER -