Recent SSRN Immigration Articles

Here are some recent immigration articles from the Social Science Research Network (www.ssrn.com):

“Violation of Human Rights of Disadvantaged and Vulnerable Refugees – Victims of Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa” OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development, Vol. 01, No. 05, pp. 67-83, 2010 THEODORE KAMWIMBI, Projects Abroad Human Rights Office KLARA BANASZAK, Projects Abroad Human Rights Office lSHANAZ KHAN, Projects Abroad Human Rights Office JENNIFER MORGAN, Projects Abroad Human Rights Office ATTILA NADORI, Projects Abroad Human Rights Office ANDREW IVES, Projects Abroad Human Rights Office.  ABSTRACT: This paper discusses violations of the civil and political, social and economic, and cultural rights of refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa during and after the xenophobic violence of May 2008 and analyzes the response of the South African government in light of its obligations under national and international law. This paper focuses primarily on the impact of the violence and its aftermath on refugees and asylum seekers in and around Cape Town, particularly those housed in the Youngsfield and Blue Waters safety sites established in response to the xenophobic attacks.

 “Immigration, Offshoring and American Jobs” NBER Working Paper No. w16439 GIANMARCO I.P. OTTAVIANO, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), Bocconi University – Department of Economics (DEP) and KITeS  GIOVANNI PERI, University of California, Davis – Department of Economics GREG C. WRIGHT, University of California, Davis – Department of Economics.  ABSTRACT:  How many “American jobs” have U.S.-born workers lost due to immigration and offshoring? Or, alternatively, is it possible that immigration and offshoring, by promoting cost-savings and enhanced efficiency in firms, have spurred the creation of jobs for U.S. natives? We consider a multi-sector version of the Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg (2008) model with a continuum of tasks in each sector and we augment it to include immigrants with heterogeneous productivity in tasks. We use this model to jointly analyze the impact of a reduction in the costs of offshoring and of the costs of immigrating to the U.S. The model predicts that while cheaper offshoring reduces the share of natives among less skilled workers, cheaper immigration does not, but rather reduces the share of offshored jobs instead. Moreover, since both phenomena have a positive “cost-savings” effect they may leave unaffected, or even increase, total native employment of less skilled workers. Our model also predicts that offshoring will push natives toward jobs that are more intensive in communication-interactive skills and away from those that are manual and routine intensive. We test the predictions of the model on data for 58 U.S. manufacturing industries over the period 2000-2007 and find evidence in favor of a positive productivity effect such that immigration has a positive net effect on native employment while offshoring has no effect on it. We also find some evidence that offshoring has pushed natives toward more communication-intensive tasks while it has pushed immigrants away from them. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

KJ