Immigration Article of the Day: The Employment Effects of Mexican Repatriations: Evidence from the 1930’s by Jongkwan Lee, Giovanni Peri, Vasil Yasenov

The Employment Effects of Mexican Repatriations: Evidence from the 1930’s by Jongkwan Lee, Giovanni Peri, Vasil Yasenov,  September 22, 2017

Abstract

During the period 1929-34 a campaign forcing the repatriation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans was carried out in the U.S. by states and local authorities. (I analyze the “forgotten” repatriation here.).  The claim of politicians at the time was that repatriations would reduce local unemployment and give jobs to Americans, alleviating the local effects of the Great Depression. This paper uses this episode to examine the consequences of Mexican repatriations on labor market outcomes of natives. Analyzing 893 cities using full count decennial Census data in the period 1930-40, we find that repatriation of Mexicans was associated with small decreases in native employment and increases in native unemployment. These results are robust to the inclusion of many controls. We then apply an instrumental variable strategy based on the differential size of Mexican communities in 1930, as well as a matching method, to estimate a causal “average treatment effect.” Confirming the OLS regressions, the causal estimates do not support the claim that repatriations had any expansionary effects on native employment, but suggest instead that they had no effect on, or possibly depressed, their employment and wages.

This paper is discussed on This American Life blog.  The findings of the report are summarized as follows:  “What their findings suggest: The mass expulsion didn’t create jobs. In fact, it did the opposite. The job markets shrank more in places that had expelled more Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. There was actually higher unemployment for the remaining residents in those places.”

KJ