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Figure 3 identifies what we call “Immigrant Magnet Counties.” These
are the 318 counties that experienced a net increase of 1,000 or more
immigrants over the decade. Bubble size is proportional to the numerical
increase. It is clear from the figure that immigrants disproportionately
settled in the industrial counties of the Northeast and Midwest and, to a
lesser extent, along the Pacific coast.
Of the 318 “Immigrant Magnet Counties” depicted in Figure 3, 72 percent
experienced a positive inflow of both foreign-born immigrants and
native in-migrants. Figure 4 presents a log-log scatter diagram that
plots each of the magnet counties in a manner designed to illustrate the
relationship between the total net in-migration (native and foreign born) and
the net increase in the foreign-born population. The 45-degree line
represents the locus of points where the increase in the foreign-born and the
total in-migration are the same. Counties plotted above the 45-degree
line experienced a net in-migration of both the native- and
foreign-born. Counties below the 45-degree line experienced a net
in-migration of foreign-born and an offsetting net out-migration of native
born.
Figure 4: Total Net In-Migration and the Increase in the Foreign-Born Population, 1900-19108
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An Alternative Model of Immigration’s Impact
As we noted, switching the focus to a period a century ago prompts us to
adopt a dynamic perspective that we believe may resolve the contradiction
between the elementary models of immigration which predict a decline in wages
and the empirical studies that find little or no evidence for such an
effect. The simple models assume that the only change in a labour market
experiencing immigration is the exogenous outward shift of the labour supply
curve. This assumption is systematically violated in the real
world. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that it is
never the case. Immigrant entry not only responds to market
conditions; it also stimulates market change.
We also suggest that it is impossible to imagine a plausible sequence of events
in which immigrant entry occurs in isolation from other related changes.
To take only the most obvious consequence, the arrival of newcomers will
increase the demand for final products. Immigrants have to eat and find
shelter and they can be counted on to purchase many other goods and services
ranging from necessities to indulgences. But, when immigrants purchase
these items, output will respond and thus the demand for labour will shift
out. Because the shift in the labour supply curve inevitably is
accompanied by a shift in the labour demand curve, it is extremely difficult to
measure a “pure” wage impact of immigration on resident wages holding “other
things equal.” The inherent technical and conceptual difficulties of this
problem, heightened by the political implications of the results, are what make
the issue of immigrant impacts so contested. We suggest that immigration
is interesting and important precisely because of those features that make
measurement of its wage impact problematic.
In addition to the labour demand shifts that occur pari passu with the
arrival of immigrants, history suggests that immigrants are generally drawn to
localities, occupations, and industries experiencing innovation, growth, and
evolutionary change. In other words, they do not locate in stagnant
textbook labour markets. Our first suggestion then is that immigrants
differentially select destinations with high and/or growing wages. The
reasons why this might be true are easy to understand. Immigrants have
already made the decision to leave home; they select their final destinations
using economic criteria. Indeed, immigrants’ selection of high wage
cities was Goldin’s explanation for the positive correlation between the city
wage and the foreign born share that she found about 1900 (Goldin 1994:
247).
