title: Do undocumented migrants earn lower wages than legal immigrants? New evidence from Mexico.
abstract: "This article examines the extent to which undocumented status lowers wage rates among immigrants to the United States from four Mexican communities.  Regression equations were estimated to determine the effect of legal status on wages independent of other demographic, social and economic variables, and special efforts were made to control for possible sample selection biases.  Findings suggest that the data are relatively free from selectivity problems that have characterized earlier studies, and that legal status had no direct effect on wage rates earned by male migrants from the four communities.  Legal status also had little effect on the kind of job that migrants take in the United States, but it does play an important indirect role in determining the length of time that migrants stay in that country.  By reducing the duration of stay, illegal status lowers the amount of employer-specific capital accruing to undocumented migrants, and thereby lowers wage rates relative to legal migrants."  Data are for 1982-1983.
authors.forename: D S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Massey
mesh_terms: D000569:Americas; D002489:Central America; D003710:Demography; D019049:Developed Countries; D003906:Developing Countries; D004467:Economics; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D004651:Employment; D006280:Health Workforce; D007182:Income; D007843:Latin America; D008800:Mexico; D009656:North America; D011153:Population; D011157:Population Dynamics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012106:Research; D012107:Research Design; D012456:Salaries and Fringe Benefits; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014171:Transients and Migrants; D014481:United States
keywords: Americas; Central America; Data Analysis; Demographic Factors; Developed Countries; Developing Countries; Economic Factors; Estimation Technics; Human Resources; Illegal Migrants; Income--legal aspects; International Migration; Labor Force; Latin America; Macroeconomic Factors; Measurement; Mexico; Migrants; Migration; North America; Northern America; Population; Population Dynamics; Reliability; Research Methodology; Socioeconomic Factors; United States; Wages--legal aspects