This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. ASSA Annual Meeting
  3. 2023
  4. Program
  5. The Assimilation, Integration and Contributions of Refugees
« Back to Results

The Assimilation, Integration and Contributions of Refugees

Paper Session

Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (CST)

Hilton Riverside, Camp
Hosted By: American Economic Association
  • Chair: William Kerr, Harvard University

Refugees without Assistance: English-Language Attainment and Economic Outcomes in the Early Twentieth Century

Ran Abramitzky
,
Stanford University
Leah Boustan
,
Princeton University
Peter Catron
,
University of Washington
Dylan Connor
,
Arizona State University
Rob Voigt
,
Northwestern University

Abstract

The United States has admitted more than 3 million refugees since 1980 through official refugee resettlement programs that provide temporary assistance. Scholars have highlighted the success of refugee groups to show the positive impact of governmental programs on assimilation and integration. In the past, however, refugees arrived without formal selection processes or federal support. We examine the integration of historical refugees using a large archive of recorded oral history interviews to understand linguistic attainment and economic outcomes of migrants who arrived before 1940. Using detailed measures of vocabulary, syntax and accented speech, we find that refugee migrants achieved higher levels of English proficiency than did economic migrants, a finding that holds even when comparing migrants from the same country of origin or religious group. This study improves on previous research of immigrant language acquisition, which typically rely on self-reported measures of fluency, and on studies of refugees, which typically assign refugee status based on country-of-birth alone. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that refugees, being unable to immediately return to their origin country, may have had greater incentive to learn or be exposed to English, which increased their linguistic attainment. Our results provide an optimistic historical precedent for the incorporation of refugees into American society.

Rising from the "Dust": Assimilation of AHA Immigrants from Vietnam into America

Sari Kerr
,
Wellesley College
William Kerr
,
Harvard University
Kendall Smith
,
London Business School

Abstract

We study the long-run assimilation to the United States of Amerasians who were born in Vietnam with a U.S. father during the Vietnam War. Following a sequence of unexpected events, the Amerasian Homecoming Act led to more than 20,000 Amerasians and 50,000 accompanying relatives migrating to the United States from 1989 to 1995. We show that small differences in age of arrival, specifically being 14-17 on entry compared to 18-21, resulted in substantial differences in future economic and social outcomes, despite the younger migrants entering under worse conditions. We trace the role of education and the types of firms who employed the migrants over the next three decades using employer-employee data.

Language Training and Refugees' Integration

Jacob Nielsen Arendt
,
Rockwool Foundation Research Unit
Iben Bolvig
,
Danish Center for Social Science Research
Mette Foged
,
University of Copenhagen
Linea Hasager
,
University of Copenhagen
Giovanni Peri
,
University of California-Davis

Abstract

We evaluate a Danish reform focused on improving Danish language training for those granted refugee status on or after January 1, 1999. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design we find a significant, permanent, positive effect on earnings. This effect emerged after completion of language classes and was accompanied by additional schooling and higher probability of working in communication-intensive jobs, suggesting that language training, rather than other minor aspects of the reform, produced it. We also find evidence of higher completion rates of lower secondary school and lower probability of crime for male children with both parents exposed to the reform.

The Fiscal Effect of Immigration: Reducing Bias in Influential Estimates

Michael Clemens
,
George Mason University

Abstract

Immigration policy can have important net fiscal effects that vary by immigrants’ skill level. But mainstream methods to estimate these effects are problematic. Methods based on cash-flow accounting offer precision at the cost of bias; methods based on general equilibrium modeling address bias with limited precision and transparency. A simple adjustment greatly reduces bias in the most influential and precise estimates: conservatively accounting for capital taxes paid by the employers of immigrant labor. The adjustment is required by firms’ profit-maximizing behavior, unconnected to general equilibrium effects. Adjusted estimates of the positive net fiscal impact of average recent U.S. immigrants rise by a factor of 3.2, with a much shallower education gradient. They are positive even for an average recent immigrant with less than high school education, whose presence causes a present-value subsidy of at least $128,000 to all other taxpayers collectively.
JEL Classifications
  • J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers
  • J0 - General