Does stricter immigration policy affect college enrollment and public-private school choice of natives?

Christian Gunadi

doi:10.1186/s40176-018-0133-7

Christian Gunadi

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40176-018-0133-7

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Abstract

In recent decades, the USA has admitted a large number of foreign-born students into its educational system, raising concerns that the presence of foreign-born students would adversely impact the educational achievement of US-born students and incentivize them to move to private schools where there are fewer immigrant students. In this article, I attempt to extend our understanding of how stricter immigration policy, such as the Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA), may affect college enrollment and the public-private school choice of US-born individuals. The analysis shows that the share of immigrant students across Arizona’s educational system declined significantly by the passage of LAWA: the share of foreign-born students in elementary and secondary schools in Arizona would be higher by approximately 1.1 and 1.7 percentage points, respectively, in the absence of LAWA. Similarly, the share of foreign-born college students in Arizona declined significantly by 1.5 percentage points due to LAWA. Despite this decline, there is no evidence that LAWA has statistically significantly affected natives’ college enrollment rates. However, there is evidence that LAWA reduces the proportion of US-born white non-Hispanic student in higher education attending private colleges.

Highlights

Between 1990 and 2010, the number of foreign students in US higher education had almost doubled, increasing the share from 2.9 to 3.5% of all college students (IIE 2017)
In the face of these trends, there are concerns that the influx of foreign-born students may adversely impact the educational outcomes of US-born students as well as inducing them to move to private schools where there are fewer immigrant students
I find no evidence that the adoption of Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) in Arizona improves the enrollment rate of US-born individuals in higher education, and this result holds among black or Hispanic natives, who are usually coming from a disadvantaged background

Summary

Introduction

Between 1990 and 2010, the number of foreign students in US higher education had almost doubled, increasing the share from 2.9 to 3.5% of all college students (IIE 2017). The share of foreign-born college students in Arizona would be higher by 1.5 percentage points in the absence of LAWA These results suggest that LAWA can serve as a natural experiment to examine how a stricter immigration policy could affect college enrollment rates and public-private school choices of natives. The passage of Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986 requires new hires to present documents verifying their eligibility to work legally in the USA and imposes sanctions on employers knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants. This measure to prevent unauthorized employment in IRCA, has been argued to be ineffective because there was no reliable, quick way to verify the information presented as part of the hiring process (Cooper and O’Neil 2005). The inaccuracy rate of E-Verify is approximately 1%, while for unauthorized workers, the error rate is approximately 54% (Westat 2009)

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