Admission Criteria and Immigrant Earnings Profiles

There has been an ongoing concern about the productivity of kinship-based immigrants in the U.S. labor market. Despite the policy importance of this issue, little empirical or theoretical attention has been devoted to learning the effect of different admission criteria on immigrants’ economic performance. To estimate the effect of admission criteria on immigrant earnings profiles, we use 1980 census data on individuals matched to Immigration and Naturalization Service information on admission criteria for country-of-origin/year-of-entry immigrant cohorts. We find that nonoccupation-based immigration, most of which is family-based, is associated with lower entry earnings but higher earnings growth than occupation-based immigration. The higher estimated earnings growth is sufficient for nonoccupation-based immigrants to catch up with occupationally admitted immigrants after eleven to eighteen years in the United States.