The Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market for Native-Born Workers: Incorporating the Dynamics of Internal Migration

Abstract

This paper estimates the impact of male immigration on wages and employment of native-born male workers. The papers contribution to the existing literature is the introduction of explicit controls for native net internal migration. The results suggest that migration controls are significant and must be included in any cross-sectional regional analysis that attempts to obtain unbiased estimates of the impact of immigration on native labor market outcomes. Although the effects of immigration on native wages and employment continue, in most cases, to be small and/or insignificant, in many instances the net migration control is found to be responsible for changing the significance and/or sign (from positive to negative) of the relationship.Immigration; Migration; Regional