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Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion

Author

Listed:
  • Clemens, Michael A.

    (George Mason University)

  • Lewis, Ethan Gatewood

    (Dartmouth College)

  • Postel, Hannah M.

    (Princeton University)

Abstract
An important class of active labor market policy has received little rigorous impact evaluation: immigration barriers intended to improve the terms of employment for domestic workers by deliberately shrinking the workforce. Recent advances in the theory of endogenous technical change suggest that such policies could have limited or even perverse labor-market effects, but empirical tests are scarce. We study a natural experiment that excluded almost half a million Mexican 'bracero' seasonal agricultural workers from the United States, with the stated goal of raising wages and employment for domestic farm workers. We build a simple model to clarify how the labor-market effects of bracero exclusion depend on assumptions about production technology, and test it by collecting novel archival data on the bracero program that allow us to measure state-level exposure to exclusion for the first time. We cannot reject the hypothesis that bracero exclusion had no effect on U.S. agricultural wages or employment, and find that important mechanisms for this result include both adoption of less labor-intensive technologies and shifts in crop mix.

Suggested Citation

  • Clemens, Michael A. & Lewis, Ethan Gatewood & Postel, Hannah M., 2017. "Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion," IZA Discussion Papers 10512, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10512
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    immigrant; immigration; displacement; visa; labor-market; employment; wage; farm; agriculture; natural experiment; United States; Mexico;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J08 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics Policies
    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

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