State Immigration Policy and the Economy: Western United States

States have been influenced by a variety of factors when creating local and state immigration laws. Although the enforcement of federal immigration law should not be enforced by state and local authorities, state legislatures have created their own laws in dealing with the immigrants that reside and work in their states. The research question of this paper is what economic factors influence states to introduce pro-immigrant policies? I will be looking at states in the west including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington from the years 2016 to 2017. The specific factors observed in this paper are the labor union participation, unauthorized immigrants, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients, state revenue, and the employment increases. These factors are all linked to the economy of the state. I use inferential statistics through bivariate correlations, linear regression analysis, and logit regression analysis, to understand the significant correlations of these specific factors to whether states in the western United States implement pro-immigration policy