What drives US immigration policy? Evidence from congressional roll call votes

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Facchini, Giovanni; Steinhardt, Max Friedrich
• 署名单位: Erasmus University Rotterdam; Erasmus University Rotterdam - Excl Erasmus MC; University of Milan; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; IZA Institute Labor Economics
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.02.008
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 734-743
• 关键词: Immigration policy; voting; political economy

摘要

Immigration is today one of the most hotly debated policy issues in the United States. Despite marked divergence of opinion even within political parties, several important reforms have been introduced in the post 1965 era. The purpose of this paper is to carry out a systematic analysis of the drivers of the voting behavior of US representatives on immigration policy in the period 1970-2006, and in particular to assess the role of economic factors at the district level. Our findings suggest that representatives from more skilled labor abundant districts are more likely to support an open immigration policy towards the unskilled, whereas the opposite is true for representatives from more unskilled labor abundant districts. This evidence is robust to the introduction of an array of additional economic and non-economic characteristics of the districts, and suggests that a simple factor analysis model can go a long way in explaining voting on immigration policy. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.