Green Cards and the Location Choices of Immigrants in the United States…ftp.iza.org/dp2145.pdf ·...
57
IZA DP No. 2145 Green Cards and the Location Choices of Immigrants in the United States, 1971-2000 David A. Jaeger DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit Institute for the Study of Labor May 2006
Green Cards and the Location Choices of Immigrants in the United States…ftp.iza.org/dp2145.pdf · 2006. 5. 26. · Green Cards and the Location Choices of Immigrants in the United
Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not
those of the institute. Research disseminated by IZA may include
views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional
policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in
Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a
place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA
is an independent nonprofit company supported by Deutsche Post
World Net. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and
offers a stimulating research environment through its research
networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA
engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in
all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts,
and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the
interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent
preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion.
Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional
character. A revised version may be available directly from the
author.
Green Cards and the Location Choices of Immigrants in the United
States, 1971-2000*
This paper documents where immigrants who enter the U.S. with
different types of visas (“green cards”) choose to live initially
and what determines those location choices. Using population data
on immigrants from the Immigration and Naturalization Service from
1971 to 2000, matched to data on state characteristics from the
Integrated Public Use Microsamples of the U.S. Census, I estimate
conditional logit models with the 48 contiguous U.S. states as the
choice set. Like previous researchers, I estimate that immigrants
have a higher probability of moving to states where individuals
from their region of birth represent a larger share of the state
population, with relatives of legal permanent residents responding
most to this factor. I also find that, in general, immigrants in
all admission categories respond to labor market conditions when
choosing where to live, but that these effects were the largest for
male employment-based immigrants and, surprisingly, refugees. JEL
Classification: J61, J18, C35 Keywords: admission categories,
immigrants, settlement patterns, conditional logit Corresponding
author: David A. Jaeger Department of Economics College of William
and Mary Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795 USA Email: [email protected]
* The author thanks Seth Sanders for comments and IZA for
financial support.
