Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/198971 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 7611
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
What happens to the distribution of public resources when undocumented migrants obtain legal status through nation-wide amnesty? In this paper, we exploit variation in legal status from the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) to answer this question and find that state governors, of whatever party affiliation, allocate more per capita aid to those counties affected by the IRCA. We posit that this is borne out of rational, forward-looking governors who allocate resources strategically in pursuit of the votes of the newly legalised who were eligible to vote five years after legalisation. To support this view, we find that the distribution of state aid differs significantly according to political context. Counties affected by the IRCA receive more resources from the state when their governor is eligible for re-election, faces political competition or enjoys line-item veto power. Our results also indicate that the transfers were targeted to the newly legalised, who by and large were of Hispanic origin, and not other constituents. We find no evidence of anti-migrant sentiment confounding our results. Counties that received more transfers from the governor also experienced improvements in Hispanic high school completion rates.
Subjects: 
immigrant legalisation
distributive politics
state and local government
JEL: 
J15
H72
P16
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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