The initial earnings of U.S. immigrants vary enormously by country of origin. Via three interrelated analyses, we show earnings convergence across source countries with time in the United States. Human-capital theory plausibly explains the inverse relationship between initial earnings and...

Twelve U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia, have recently enacted measures granting undocumented immigrants access to driving licenses. We exploit the state and temporal variation in the issuing of state driving licenses to undocumented immigrants to estimate its impact on these...

The initial earnings of U.S. immigrants vary enormously by country of origin. Via three interrelated analyses, we show earnings convergence across source countries with time in the United States Human-capital theory plausibly explains the inverse relationship between initial earnings and...

This paper identifies intermarriage (between non-citizens and citizens) as an important response mechanism to intensified immigration enforcement, particularly among Mexican non-citizens. Exploiting the temporal and geographic variation in the implementation of interior immigration enforcement...

Using historical, longitudinal data on individuals, we track the earnings of immigrant and U.S.-born women. Following individuals, instead of synthetic cohorts, avoids biases in earnings-growth estimates caused by compositional changes in the cohorts that are followed. The historical data...

Two radically different descriptions of immigrant earnings trajectories in the U.S. have emerged. One asserts that immigrant men following the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act have low initial earnings and high earnings growth. Another asserts that post-1965 immigrants have low initial...