Mexican Immigration to the United States
National Bureau of Economic Research
University of Chicago Press, 2007
WE WILL KNOW just how significant the impact of Mexican, and Latino, immigration to the United States will have been the day officials start greeting visitors to the country by saying “bienvenidos” – and that day may not be so far off. Mexican immigration to the US has reached such a scale that the newcomers, and their offspring, are having a significant economic and cultural effect on the host country – and have ignited within the host population a contentious debate about their political and social impact. Familiar concerns surface: the implications for the low-skill workforce and wages, and problems with assimilation. Mexican Immigration to the United States is a comprehensive overview of this phenomenon culled from papers presented at a conference in 2005. It reflects the growing level of importance of this issue to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the US. It is an essential summary of available empirical findings on what is known about the economic impact of Mexican immigration to the US. The sheer size of the influx over recent decades is unique not only relative to current immigration, but also to historic immigration levels in the US: the estimated flow of Mexican immigrants to the US during the 1990s was, for example, a staggering 400,000 people per year. But Mexicans aren’t just watering lawns and cleaning toilets anymore: they are forming a hungry tier of the entrepreneurial class generating per capita levels of wealth that are greatly enhancing their importance as economic actors. Mexican Immigration to the United States is an important point of departure for anyone interested in exploring the economic impact of immigration anywhere in the world. – GO’T
