Race, State Surveillance, and Policy Spillover: Do Restrictive Immigration Policies Affect Citizen Earnings?

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates whether restrictive immigration policy affects earnings among White, African-American, and Latinx US citizens. Incorporating sociological theories of race that point to state surveillance of Black and Latinx bodies as a linchpin of racial inequality, we ask: Do immigration policies that expand the reach of law enforcement spill over to lower or to raise earnings of employed US citizens? If so, are the effects of these policies greater for Latinx and African-American citizens compared to their White counterparts? Are the effects of these policies stronger among Latinx and African-American men—who are more directly targeted by surveillance policing as a function of their gender—than for co-ethnic women? To investigate these questions, we combine two nationally representative longitudinal datasets—the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We find that immigration policies that expand the reach of law enforcement raise wages among native-born Whites. However, we also find that state policies enhancing immigration law enforcement decrease wages among Latinx and African-American citizens compared to Whites. We find no gender/race interactions influencing spillover effects of immigration policy on earnings.