Unauthorized Mexican Workers in the 1990 Los Angeles County Labour Force

• Published in: International Migration
• Main Authors: Marcelli, Enrico A., Heer, David M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 1997
• Subjects: Pacific; eskimo*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2435.00004; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2F1468-2435.00004; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-2435.00004

By analysing how unauthorized Mexicans compare with seven other ethno’racial groups in Los Angeles County, separately and collectively, by educational attainment and time spent in the US, we find that unauthorized Mexicans had relatively fewer years of formal education (either in the US or in Mexico) and had been in the US a relatively fewer number of years than in‐migrants of other ethno‐racial backgrounds in 1990. These findings are then used as proxies to compare the human capital endowments of different ethno‐racial groups. We next estimate the number of unauthorized Mexicans by occupation, industry and class of workers, and compare these distributions with the total labour force and with the other ethno‐racial groups in Los Angeles County. To the extent that unauthorized Mexicans are found to be substitutes (complements) in the labour market, they can be expected to be a valid (invalid) empirical source of social tension and hence contemporary restrictionist immigration policy sentiment. Results show that amounts of human capital are positively related to the kinds of occupations filled. Analysis of the percentage of discordant pairs shows that unauthorized Mexicans are found to be most dissimilar (potential complements) to non‐Latino (1) Anglos; (2) Blacks; (3) American Indians, Aleuts, and Eskimos; and (4) Asians and Pacific Islanders. Results also show that those ethno‐racial groups most similar to (potential substitutes for) unauthorized Mexicans are (1) legal Mexican in‐migrants and (2) other Latino foreign‐born persons (both authorized and unauthorized). The ethno‐racial group which falls into the intermediate realm of (dis)similarity is US‐born Mexican. Consequently, for most persons residing in Los Angeles County the rise of restrictionist immigrant sentiment is not consistent with their labour market experiences, and restrictionist immigration policy, to the extent it is based on a labour market competition assumptions, may not be justified.