Browsing by Subject "immigration policy"
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Item Open Access Essays in Labor Economics: Effects of Immigration Policy on Vulnerable Populations(2020) Grittner, Amanda MelinaThis dissertation studies three questions in labor economics centering around immigration policy and its effects on vulnerable populations. I use administrative data from the United States (U.S.) and Germany to address these questions empirically.
In the first chapter, I investigate the effects of an increase in immigration enforcement through local police force on domestic violence victims’ help-seeking behavior. I use a fixed effects model, a generalized synthetic control method and novel administrative data on the use of services for domestic violence victims in North Carolina. In North Carolina, a large fraction of individuals of Hispanic origin are undocumented immigrants or connected to undocumented immigrants. I find that local immigration enforcement significantly reduces Hispanics’ use of domestic violence services. It does not affect service use by African Americans who are predominantly U.S.-born citizens. This suggests that the decrease in Hispanics' service use is directly related to their immigration status and not driven by a general effect on minorities. I do not find any robust evidence that local immigration enforcement affects intimate partner homicides of Hispanic women.
The second chapter studies the relationship between workforce demographics, workplace hazard, and worker complaints about hazardous or illegal working conditions. In joint work with Matthew Johnson, I examine if worker complaints are effective in directing inspections by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to the most hazardous workplaces. We measure worker complaints and workplace injuries by inspections triggered by a worker complaint and a serious workplace injury, respectively. We find that the complaint rate in a county and industry is positively associated with its recent injury rate. This relationship changes for workplaces with a high share of Hispanic workers. Workplaces that employ larger shares of Hispanic workers have lower complaint rates, but higher injury rates. We use fixed effects regressions to estimate the effect of local immigration enforcement on Hispanic workers' willingness to complain about hazardous conditions. We find that stronger enforcement significantly reduces worker complaints, but not workplace injuries in workplaces with a high share of Hispanic workers. This provides evidence that stronger local immigration enforcement reduces Hispanic workers' willingness to complain about unsafe working conditions irrespective of the true workplace hazard.
In the third chapter, I investigate the effect of integrating refugee students in elementary schools on the academic performance of native students. Using administrative data from Germany, I exploit the variation in the percentage of refugee students within schools to account for endogenous sorting of refugees into schools. I do not find any evidence for negative effects of refugee students' integration on the academic performance of native elementary students. In contrast, exposure to refugee students reduces mandatory grade retention rates of German fourth graders. Effects on the percentage of students who receive a recommendation for the higher secondary track are very small and statistically insignificant. I also show that refugee students attend schools where German students' performance is lower.
Item Open Access The Under-subscription of T-1 Visas: A Study on America’s Conceptualization of Human Trafficking Victims(2012-12-07) Horstmann, BethanyThis thesis examines the framing of the Victims in Trafficking in Persons nonimmigrant Visa (T Visa), established in 2000 within the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA)—part of the domestic effort within the United States to combat trafficking following the Palermo Protocol. Since its inception, the T Visa has been severely undersubscribed, in both the number of applicants and those who are ultimately approved for the T Visa. Each year Congress is authorized to approve up to 5,000 T Visas, yet between 2002-2010 Congress approved less than 4,000 of 6,000 total applications for the T Visa. This study explores why the T Visa is undersubscribed by examining the frames and branding of the T Visa both in terms of the State Department’s presentation to non governmental organizations (NGOs) and NGO’s presentation to victims of trafficking. Based off an analysis of three organizations (the State Department, the Coalition for the Abolition of Slavery and Trafficking, and the Polaris Project), this study finds the presence of a prosecutorial framework, an anti-slavery framing that goes against certain feminist presentations of trafficking, and a palpable tension between immigration and humanitarian law are all possible contributing factors to the T Visa’s under-subscription. In the conclusion, recommendations are made in order to curb this under-subscription and make the T Visa a more effective tool. Specifically, the author recommends all three organizations, as well as policymakers in the United States at large, rethink their framing of trafficking and consider revamping or changing their focus on antislavery framing.