Differential Impacts of Immigrants on Native Black and White Workers

This paper examines the differential labor market impacts of immigration on native non-Hispanic white and African American workers across metropolitan areas. Historically, immigrants have played an intriguing and complex role in reinforcing and reproducing racial inequality. For example, imported Chinese labor was used to threaten black labor in the agricultural South in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Black workers faced competition with growing numbers of Irish and Southern European immigrants in northern cities in the early twentieth century. (See for example, Lowen, 1971; Takaki, 1998; Reich, 1981) The potential role of immigrants in shaping racial outcomes has once again emerged as a significant societal issue with the large-scale global movement of labor from less-developed regions to advanced economies during the latter part of the twentieth century. There are conceptual reasons to believe that the increase in the supply of foreign-born labor could affect U.S.-born non-Hispanic (NH) white and African Americans differently. For example, pre-existing racial inequality disproportionately concentrates African Americans in less skilled sectors with relatively more competition from foreign-born workers. While this expose blacks to substitution effects, the presence of immigrant labor may also have a complementary effect by expanding industries, particularly in the context of extensive global competition for lowwage economies.