To appear in 28 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal #1 (2014)
April 2013 draft.
The Law and Economics of Family Unification
By Alan Hyde
Abstract
The US is internationally unique in the percentage of immigrant visas reserved for
family members. The practice has been criticized on the grounds that visas for parents,
siblings, and adult children might better be reallocated to skilled workers, and Congress
has come close to adopting such reforms. This Article argues by contrast that family
unification is a very good economic deal for the US. First, the limited data that exist,
contrasting immigrant earnings by type of visa, show no sharp distinction in earnings by
type of immigrant visa. This is a surprise to one operating entirely within a human
capital framework in which all earnings in labor markets are necessarily a function of
skills and education. The paradox is resolved by incorporating three economic models of
migration or labor markets that are not usually applied to this debate: (1) New Economics
of Migration or family investment models, in which families, not individuals, are
economic units; (2) network models of labor markets, in which productivity reflects
social ties rather than skills as such; and (3) family economics in which a woman’s
economic contribution is often reflected in the earnings of her husband, children, or a
family firm. Incorporating these models makes sense of three frequently-observed
patterns of immigrant economic activity that illustrate why family unification visas are a
good economic deal. Immigrant women frequently perform paid or unpaid intrafamily
child care. Immigrants frequently work in family businesses. Immigrant wives
frequently work while husbands build small businesses or attend graduate school. In
each of these common scenarios, the immigrant admitted on a family unification visa is
economically productive and almost certain not to be taking a job from a US worker.
However, the immigrant’s economic contribution is importantly realized by the
immigrant’s children, spouse, or family business. While skilled migration is crucial to
US economic success, there is no reason that it should come at the expense of family
unification.

Distinguished Professor and Sidney Reitman Scholar, Rutgers University School of Law, Newark NJ. An earlier
version was presented at the Immigration Law Teachers Workshop, Hofstra University School of Law, June 1-2,
2012; thanks to Jennifer Gordon, Audrey Macklin, and David Martin for helpful comments. Rutgers University is
one of the best places in the US to study immigration, and my students make teaching immigration law a dream.
Outstanding research contributions to this paper were made by Amy Morilla, Joseph Dearie, and Paul Abels.
1
The US stands alone internationally in the importance of family unification to its system
of immigration law. Family unification is the biggest category of immigrant visas and takes up,
through derivative visas, much of other visa categories as well.1 While long established, this
preference for family unification has been controversial. Academics, study commissions, and
Congressional Republicans have frequently advocated trimming the number of visas devoted to
family unification in order to increase the number of visas available for skilled workers, and
some Democrats have shown themselves willing to do this deal. 2 There has been little
academic or policy defense of family unification.3
This Article is the first such defense from an economic perspective. I argue that family
unification visas are an excellent economic deal for the US. I need no convincing of the
importance of skilled migrants to the US economy.4 US methods for recruiting skilled workers
can be improved in many ways that lie outside the subject of this Article.5 This Article argues
rather that any such increase or improvement in recruitment of skilled migrants should not come
at the expense of current visas for family members.
The defense of family unification proceeds in three steps. Part III of this Article reviews
the limited existing literature that attempts to examine the economic contributions of immigrants
depending on the type of visa under which they were admitted. Most show surprisingly little
difference, with any such difference at admission dissipating over time. At the same time, other
1
Part I infra.
Part II infra.
3
Hiroshi Motomura has defended family unification from an ethical perspective. Hiroshi Motomura, The Family
and Immigration: A Roadmap for the Ruritanian Lawmaker, 43 AM.J.COMP.L. 511 (1995); Hiroshi Motomura, We
Asked for Workers, but Families Came: Time, Law, and the Family in Immigration and Citizenship, 14
VA.J.SOC.POL’Y & L. 103 (2006).
4
Alan Hyde, WORKING IN SILICON VALLEY: ECONOMIC AND LEGAL ANALYSIS OF A HIGH-VELOCITY LABOR
MARKET 125-39 (2003).
5
The weakest link in the US system of recruiting skilled immigrant labor is the absence of any formal pathway from
graduate or post-graduate study to lawful permanent residence. Intelligent discussion of admission of skilled
individuals should now begin with the outstanding article by my Rutgers colleague Jennifer Hunt, Which
Immigrants Are Most Innovative and Entrepreneurial? Distinctions by Entry Visa, 29 J.LAB.ECON 417 (2011).
Hunt has hold of an unusual database, not previously used, that permits her to track various accomplishments by
type of visa at entry. While immigrants in all visa categories compare well with similarly-situated natives, for some
the differences are not major. Immigrants who arrive to attend high school in the US, for example, have about the
same economic performance as similar natives. The most striking difference, however, is for immigrants who arrive
in the US on student visas to perform post-doctoral work. They make more money than similar natives and are
vastly more likely to patent, found companies, and publish. They are also, as immigration lawyers know, a group
with no formal path from student visa to lawful permanent resident status. On finishing that post-doctoral work, the
noncitizen may remain in the US if sponsored by an employer or spouse, just like any other noncitizen. This
absence of a pathway from graduate work to residence is well-known and has given rise to the proposal—which
Hunt shows to be well-founded—that a “green card be stapled to every PhD given a noncitizen.” (While this
proposal has been attributed to every prominent US technology executive at one time or another, the earliest
reference I have tracked down is from Mike Maibach, then Director of Governmental Affairs for Intel. Sally C.
Pipes. Graduating with a Green Card, Chief Executive (April 1, 1995), available online at
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Graduating+with+a+green+card.-a017015380.) Hunt’s work shows that, should
Maibach’s proposal prove too heavy a lift, an effective program might award lawful permanent residence to all
noncitizens who complete post-doctoral work in science, technology, and engineering. Republicans should worry
more about paths from graduate school to lawful permanent residence, and less about cutting family visas.
2
2
countries’ attempts to direct visas to skilled workers—Canada’s has been influential in US policy
debates—have often had disappointing unintended consequences.
Part IV summarizes the case against visas for family members, which takes place inside a
narrow human capital framework, within the assumptions of which it is tautologically true. In a
human capital framework: (A) Decisions to migrate are made by individual maximizers, who
migrate when the anticipated benefits to migration exceed the anticipated costs. (B) Migrants
enter labor markets in which compensation is entirely or predominately a function of “human
capital” or “skills,” typically measured by degrees held or work experience.6 (C) Unpaid labor is
ignored, as difficult to measure and probably reflecting “low human capital.” Under these three
simplifying assumptions, common to labor economics within a human capital framework, it is
true tautologically that an immigrant with a lot of skills will outearn a migrant who lacks them,
and it is just irrational to issue a family member a visa that might have gone to a skilled worker.
However, substantial economic analysis departs from these three simplifying assumptions
of the human capital approach. This Article is among the first to apply these in the legal
literature and certainly the first to apply them to the analysis of visas for family members. Part V
will broaden our perspectives to take in three bodies of economic literature that helpfully correct
the human capital approach. This enriched economic theory better explain the empirical results
in Part III. It shows why, contrary to the tautologies of human capital, immigrants sponsored by
family members do well even in existing economic studies, while suggesting simultaneously that
those studies almost certainly underestimate their economic contribution. Part V will introduce:
A The New Economics of Migration, or family investment model, under which the unit
making the decision to migrate is the family, not an isolated individual;
B Network models of labor markets, in which individual earning importantly reflects
social ties and location in networks, rather than just human capital; and
C Family economics, in which unpaid intrafamily care is valued. Similarly, low paid
work that grows a family business is given its full value even though reflected in the income of
the business rather than the individual.
With these powerful lenses before our eyes, we can make sense of the otherwise
surprising findings in Part III that immigrants admitted with family ties are just about as
successful as immigrants admitted for skills. Part VI assembles ethnographic illustrations.
These illustrate three common patterns. (A) Immigrants admitted on family unification visas are
particularly likely to perform unpaid intrafamily care, particularly in Latina and Asian families.
Their economic contribution shows up, not in their individual earnings (which may be zero), but
in the earnings of their daughters and sisters who are able to work full-time, and in the health and
well-being of the children in their care. (B) Immigrants admitted on family unification visas
The convention in this literature is to use “skills” to refer to academic degrees held, perhaps (but usually not)
including work experience. I will do my best to reject this convention. Academic degrees, as we shall see, are not a
good proxy for skills. They are an even poorer proxy for “skills sought by employers.” However, this Article will
quote from other scholars who, unfortunately in my view, use the term “skills” as synonymous with academic
degrees. On the important skills possessed by “unskilled” labor without formal education past high school, see Tom
Juravich, CHAOS ON THE SHOP FLOOR: A WORKER’S VIEW OF QUALITY, PRODUCTIVITY, AND MANAGEMENT
(1985)(participant observer in wire factory where only the machine operators have any idea how to operate the
firm’s antiquated machines); Ken C. Kusterer, KNOW-HOW ON THE JOB: THE IMPORTANT WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF
“UNSKILLED” WORKERS (1978).
6
3
often work in family-owned businesses. Their economic contribution shows up in the earnings
of the business. (C) Immigrant wives are often in the labor force while their husbands build
small businesses or attend graduate or other school. In all these patterns, the immigrant will be
making crucial contributions to economic growth that will be reflected, not in her individual
earnings, but in the earnings of other family members or their business.
Part VII concludes. The Argument, as may be seen, will have ranged through economic
data, economic theory, and ethnography. It will involve inference and assumption and cannot be
definitive. But it will strongly suggest that the US benefits from visas for family members, and
that these contribute powerfully to economic growth and immigrant integration. We should
think very carefully before changing a system that has brought such benefits to the US.
I.
Family Unification in Current Immigration Law
About two-thirds of lawful immigration to the United States is authorized because of the
immigrant’s relation to a US citizen or lawful permanent resident.7 The Immigration and
Nationality Act sets aside 480,000 visas annually for family-sponsored immigrants.8 It also
creates large categories not subject to this world-wide level, most of which are also for family
members.9 By contrast, the statute caps employment-based immigrant visas at 140,000 annually,
a number that has not changed for decades.10 About 45% of these employment-based visas go to
family members of the principal visa beneficiary.11
The largest single group of migrants comprises the “immediate relatives” of US citizens:
spouses, unmarried minor children, and parents of a citizen of the US. In fiscal 2011, 453,158
such immediate relatives became lawful permanent residents of the US.12 There are no
numerical quotas or waiting times for the admission of such “immediate relatives.” A smaller
group-- 234, 931--became lawful permanent residents under the family preference categories,
which are subject to numerical limitations. 13 Combining the immediate relatives, and those
admitted in the family preference categories, yields about 65 percent of lawful migration to the
US.
7
http://www.migrationinformation.org/charts/spot-oct12-fig2.cfm
INA Sec 201(c ) (1), 8 U.S.C. Sec 1151(c ) (1). As immigration professionals know, these statutory numbers are
just the start of more complicated calculation that I will spare the reader. They may be taken as a rough guide to
relative importance.
9
INA Sec 201(b)(2), 8 U.S.C. Sec 1151 (b)(2).
10
INA Sec 201(d), 8 U.S.C. Sec 1151(d). The limit of 140,000 visas, for immigrants admitted for skills, was set in
1990, when both the US economy, and the pool of talent available (particularly from Asia), were significantly
smaller. This was more than a doubling of the earlier annual limit of 54,000 such visas. Aristide R. Zolberg, A
NATION BY DESIGN: IMMIGRATION POLICY IN THE FASHIONING OF AMERICA 380 (2006).
11
[check figure: AMMF 7th ed 283 say “over half” of 140,000 go to derivative beneficiaries]
12
Joseph Russell & Jeanne Batalova, Green Card Holders and Lawful Migration to the United States,
http://www.migrationinformation.org/USfocus/display.cfm?ID=911 (October 2012).
13
Id. These preference categories, set out in INA Sec 203(a), 8 U.S.C. Sec 1153(a), currently comprise:
(1) Unmarried adult sons and daughters of citizens
(2) Spouses, minor children, and unmarried adult sons and daughters of lawful permanent residents
(3) Married sons and daughters of citizens
(4) Brothers and sisters of citizens
8
4
Family members also take a substantial percentage of the immigrant visas issued under other
provisions of the statute, as derivative beneficiaries of the principal visa recipient.14 As
mentioned, 45 percent, of the paltry 140,000 visas set aside for employer sponsorship or special
skills or abilities, actually go to such family members “accompanying or following to join” their
spouse or parent.15 Similarly, 40 percent of the visas issued under the diversity lottery go to
spouses and children of the lottery winner.16 Refugees, too, may bring in their spouses and
unmarried minor children.17
Finally, family ties are important in other aspects of US immigration law.18 For example, ties
to spouses or children who are US citizens or lawful residents may be crucial in considering
whether to waive grounds that would make a noncitizen inadmissible19 or cancel a noncitizen’s
removal from the US.20
II.
Critique of family unification
This importance given to family unification in US law and practice is long-standing.
Throughout all the immigration reforms of the twentieth century, from the era of national origin
quotas to the present, there have always been preferences for family members, and their numbers
have always dwarfed the numbers available for skilled workers.21 Such a preference for family
unification is, so far as I know, unique to the US. Immigration policy often compares the US to
Canada and Australia, two culturally-similar countries whose populations include a higher
proportion of immigrants than the US. Both devote a higher percentage of immigrant visas to
“skilled” immigrants.22 International law instruments relating to migration do not protect family
unification as a value. Neither the Refugees Convention nor the Convention on Migrant Labor
refers to any right to be accompanied by family.23
14
INA Sec 203(d), 8 USC Sec 1153 (d). Such derivative status is given to the spouse or unmarried minor child of
the principal visa beneficiary.
15
16
17
INA Sec 208(b)(3), 8 USC Sec 1158(b)(3).
See generally Motomura, supra n.3.
19
e.g. INA Sec 212(h)(1)(B),8 U.S.C. Sec 1182(h)(1)(B)(waiver of certain criminal law grounds of inadmissibility);
INA Sec 212(i)(1), 8 U.S.C.
20
INA Sec 240A(b), 8 U.S.C. Sec 1229b(b).
21
No purpose would be served here by tracing all the developments in family unification policy, so long as the
reader remembers that it is long-standing, has survived all twentieth and twenty-first century immigration law
reform, and that the numbers devoted to family unification are consistently three or four times the number of visas
set aside for workers either with skills thought to be needed by the economy or sponsored by employers. For more
historical detail, see Zolberg, supra n.10; Susan F. Martin, A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS (2011).
22
Canadian practice inspired Republican legislative proposals in 2007 and will be considered in more depth below.
Australia admits twice as many immigrants for skills as for family ties. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 3416.0
Perspectives on Migrants, 2011 http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]
18
23
5
Beginning in the early 1980s, the preference for family unification became controversial
politically among free-market economists associated with the Council of Economic Advisers and
American Enterprise Institute, who argued that immigration in general was or could be positive
for the US, but had to be rebalanced away from family unification and toward skilled workers.24
(Again, this Article does not take on the question of skilled workers, but is focused on the
critique of family migration). The rationale for limiting family unification visas varied. Barry
Chiswick, writing in a human capital framework, assumed that visas awarded either for employer
sponsorship, or for degrees, would naturally attract immigrants with higher human capital than
those awarded visas because of their relation to current US residents.25 George Borjas, writing
more than a decade later, understood that the two general types of visas attract generally similar
individuals from any given country. He frankly favors reallocating visas from family
preferences, to skilled workers, as a way of limiting immigration from Latin America in favor of
immigration from the rest of the world.26
24
I have not located any criticism of family unification before the early 1980s. The Select Commission on
Immigration and Refugee Policy, appointed by President Carter in 1977 and chaired successively by Reuben Askew
and Father Theodore Hesburgh, instead advocated expansion of the numbers devoted to family unification. It
recommended placing adult unmarried sons and daughters of US citizens into the category without numerical
restrictions, and would have done the same for grandparents of adult US citizens, a category never before or since
included in the immigration laws. There was a proposal, rejected by the Select Commission, to eliminate visas for
siblings. Martin, supra n.21, at 208. The lasting contributions of the Select Commission, eventually adopted in
1986, were sanctions on employers who hired the undocumented, and legalization of some unauthorized migrants.
25
The earliest suggestion that I have found, that visas be reallocated from family unification to skilled workers, is
remarkably offhand. In a detailed essay appearing in two different collections published by the American Enterprise
Institute, economist Barry Chiswick offered a highly upbeat analysis of the economic progress of immigrants,
showing them quickly equaling and surpassing the earnings of similarly situated residents, a finding true in several
different countries. In concluding, Chiswick added: “In the empirical analysis it was not possible to distinguish
immigrants who would be admitted under a kinship criterion, currently the primary basis for rationing immigration
visas to the United States, from those who would be admitted under a productivity criterion. [footnote omitted].
There is a presumption, however, that a properly functioning productivity criterion would be more successful than a
kinship criterion in identifying those who would have greater skills, with greater transferability to the United States,
and more innate ability and work motivation relevant for this country.” Barry R. Chiswick, The Economic Progress
of Immigrants: Some Apparently Universal Patterns, in CONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC PROBLEMS 1979 (William
Fellner ed. 1979) at 359, reprinted THE GATEWAY: U.S. IMMIGRATION ISSUES AND POLICIES 119, 157 (Barry R.
Chiswick ed. 1982). Thirty years on, little has changed: it is frequently “presumed,” seemingly reasonably, that
targeting visas to skilled workers would attract more productive workers, yet the empirical case has still not been
made.
26
George J. Borjas is the most prominent scholar concerned about what he believes are the declining skills of
immigrants to the US. His advocacy of trimming family unification visas, and reallocating these to a Canadian-style
points system, influenced Republican Congressional proposals in 2007. However, Borjas is absolutely explicit that
this proposal is designed to reallocate visas away from Latin America to the rest of the world. “[T]here would not
have been a decline in the relative skills and earnings of immigrants if the national origin mix of immigrants had
remained the same in recent decades.” George J. Borjas, HEAVEN’S DOOR: IMMIGRATION POLICY AND THE
AMERICAN ECONOMY 10 (1999). “[T]he decline in immigrant economic performance can be attributed to a single
factor, the changing national origin mix of the immigrant population. [italics original].” Id. 45.
Borjas does not argue that among immigrants from any given country, the type of visa will change the skills of those
admitted. Rather, he accepts the studies, discussed infra Part III, showing little if any difference among immigrants
from any given country by type of visa used at entry. “[T]he points system works not by attracting more skilled
immigrants from each source country, but by changing the national origin mix of the immigrant population.” Id. 59.
“The Canadian point system has little effect on the education or relative wages of specific national origin groups.”
Id. 60, citing George J. Borjas, Immigration Policy, National Origin, and Immigrant Skills: A Comparison of
Canada and the United States, in SMALL DIFFERENCES THAT MATTER: LABOR MARKETS AND INCOME
MAINTENANCE IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES 21-43 (David Card and Richard B. Freeman eds. 1993). “To
6
Beginning in the 1980s, Republicans have repeatedly attempted to reduce the number of
visas for family unification. Democrats have shown themselves willing to agree as part of larger
deals in which they got other things they valued more. Such proposals have come close to
adoption.
In the run-up to the 1986 legislation, Sen. Alan Simpson, a leading Republican voice on
immigration, tried and failed to eliminate visas for siblings.27 As noted, this did not make it into
the 1986 legislation. Simpson returned to the fight in 1988, introducing legislation, this time cosponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy, to limit family visas. Sibling visas would have been
restricted to those who had never married, and the numbers gained then redirected into a new
category of so-called independent migrants who would qualify on combination of education,
skills, English fluency and diversity of source country. This category of independent migrants
had been advocated by the Select Commission. Simpson-Kennedy passed the Senate but not the
House, where business interests, supported by the administration of the elder President Bush,
opposed its firm cap on admissions and joined with ethnic and religious organizations supporting
family unification. When reintroduced in 1989, Simpson-Kennedy no longer touched family
unification.28
Legislation in 1990 created a new Commission on Immigration Reform which did not really
get underway until President Clinton named former Representative Barbara Jordan to its head.
The Commission issued a series of reports in the 1990s that represented no clear vision for
immigration. One advocated eliminating visas for siblings and adult children for redistribution
to other categories.29 Like almost everything in the Jordan Commission, this sent a highlyconfused message about the economic value of all immigration. The eventual 1996 legislation
retained visas for siblings and adult children, but instead sought to limit family unification by
requiring economic sponsorship and restricting access to public benefits. 30 In its final
September1997 Report, following the1996 legislation, USCIR reiterated its earlier
some extent, the point system would mark a de facto acceptance of the kinds of national origin restrictions that
characterized US immigration policy prior to the 1965 Amendments.” Id. 61.
While detailed analysis of Borjas is beyond this paper, the assertion of declining immigrant quality may be
disposed of quickly. It is true that a snapshot of immigrants in their first year in the US shows a larger gap than in
previous decades between their earnings in that year and the earnings of similarly-situated US workers. It is also
true, however, that the immigrants’ earnings then grow more rapidly, and converge with US workers about ten years
after arrival. Harriet Orcutt Duleep & Daniel J. Dowhan, Insights from Longitudinal Data on the Earnings Growth
of US Foreign-Born Men, 39 DEMOGRAPHY 485, 504 (2002).
27
28
Martin, supra n.21,at 216; Zolberg, supra n.10, at 378
U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, LEGAL IMMIGRATION: SETTING PRIORITIES (1995).
30
The Jordan Commission had invented economic sponsorship but would have required it only to admit adult
parents, Martin, supra n.21, at 267-68. Congress instead required such sponsorship for all family admission, INA
Sec.212(a)(4)(C), 8 USC Sec 1182(a)(4)(C).
29
7
recommendations to narrow family reunion.31 These failed to find Congressional sponsors at
that time.32
However, a decade later, when negotiations around comprehensive immigration reform
became intense in 2007, Congressional Republicans once again sought to restrict family
unification.33 One version would have eliminated entirely visas for siblings, parents, and adult
sons and daughters. In another version, parents could come in but only if they were over 65, had
health insurance, and majority of their children lived in US. Republicans also unsuccessfully
proposed increasing the financial liability of the visa sponsor from the current 125% of poverty
level to 200%, a level at which 45% of US families would be unable to sponsor a family
member. Sen. Kennedy, the leading Democratic negotiator, proposed to reduce backlogs in
current categories, then eliminate visas for siblings and adult children (except for 5000 hardship
visas for “medical or other hardships that require their relatives’ presence”) and over eight years
shift 140,000 slots to a new points system for skilled migrants.34 It is reported that Sens.
Kennedy and McCain signed off on this proposal, at which point Sen. Robert Menendez stormed
out of the room.35 However, negotiations eventually collapsed and no comprehensive
immigration reform was enacted in 2007. Republicans have continued to advocate limiting
family unification, while Democrats have proposed expanding it.36 The issue may surface in
forthcoming discussions of immigration reform.37 Neither side, however, has ever put forward
much in the way of economic support for its proposals.38
31
US Commission on Immigration Reform, 1997 Report to Congress: Becoming an American: Immigration and
Immigrant Policy, at xvii-xix, 224-25. The insistence on elimination of a visa category that Congress had, only a
year earlier, voted to restrict but not eliminate, before any evidence was available on the impact of Congress’s plan,
shows the ideological quality of this debate.
32
Zolberg, supra n.10, at 429 attributes this failure to both parties’ concern with the Hispanic vote, and Sen.
Simpson’s retirement and replacement, as chair of the relevant committee, by the much more pro-immigration
Spencer Abraham.
33
[websites formerly used are down; must get other source for precise Republican 2007 proposals.]
34
http://kennedy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FAMILY%20REUNIFICATION%20REMAINS%20T
HE%20CORNERSTONE%20OF%20LEGAL%20IMMIGRATION%20.pdf [This is no longer
active 2013; must find another source for Kennedy’s 2007 proposal].
35
36
See, e.g., the Reuniting American Families Act introduced in different versions by Sen. Menendez and Rep.
Honda. This would recapture visas unused because of bureaucratic delay; permit lawful permanent residents to
bring in spouses and children as immediate relatives exempt from numerical restrictions, a category currently
restricted to relatives of US citizens; increase country quotas; allow unification even after the death of a spouse; and
remove bars from families of WWII Filipino soldiers. The 2007 version, which also included some amnesty
provisions, got 53 Senate supporters, but did not pass due to Republican filibuster.
37
David Brooks, New York Times columnist and regular conduit for Republican talking points, devoted his
February 1, 2013 column to the proposition that immigration reform is an “easy problem,” advocating, without any
sense that this might be controversial: “bend the current reform proposals so they look more like the Canadian
system, which tailors the immigrant intake to regional labor markets and favors high-skill workers.” David Brooks,
The Easy Problem, New York Times, Feb. 1, 2013, at A27, col.1. Jeb Bush has published a book advocating
reallocation of family unification visas. Jeb Bush & Clint Bolick, IMMIGRATION WARS: FORGING AN AMERICAN
SOLUTION (2013).
38
“It does not appear that the current set of proposals for reform are informed by the findings of social science
research.” Michael Fix & Wendy Zimmerman, Immigrant Families and Public Policy: A Deepening Divide, in
8
.
III.
Economic data on Family Unification
The thesis of this Article is that, on this issue, Sen. Menendez was right and Sen. Kennedy
was wrong. Family-based visas are a very good economic deal for the US. They do not detract
from recruitment of skilled individuals and in fact explain why US modes of recruiting skilled
workers (employer and family sponsorship) are so much more economically successful than the
Canadian points system. Making this case, however, requires three steps and will inevitably
involve inference and suggestion. This is because neither the government, nor any other source,
collects systematic economic data on immigrants, let alone by type of visa. The 2000 Census
was the last to ask respondents where they were born; since that Census, researchers must use the
much smaller samples of the American Community Survey or other special surveys.
My argument thus proceeds in three steps. Part III of this Article surveys the limited
economic literature that attempts, by inference, to compare the economic performance of
immigrants according to the type of visa under which they were admitted. While the studies
employ different methodologies to estimate this, and do not all agree, on balance they suggest
very small differences in economic performance in the year following admission, followed by
convergence. Part IV examines the difficulties that a human capital approach encounters in
explaining the data in Part III. Part V employs broader economic theory than the customary
human capital framework in order to explain the results in Part III, and to suggest further that
these may systematically undervalue the economic contributions of family unification migrants.
Specifically, we will employ the New Economics of Immigration, in which economic actors are
precisely families, not individuals; network models of labor markets, in which compensation
partly reflects ties to others, not just individual human capital; and family economics, valuing
economic contributions that are realized, as is disproportionately true for immigrants, by other
family members or family businesses. Part VI illustrates the economic theories with
ethnographies and other social science on immigrant families. It will show that immigrants
admitted on family unification visas are particularly likely to perform unpaid intrafamily labor
that enables other family members to be more productive; to work in family businesses (so that
their contributions show up as returns to the business, not the individual); and to work to support
other family members’ education or building small businesses. The result will be a suggestive,
but alas not definitive, portrait of the economics of family unification.
Of course, one need not base one’s views on family unification on economic data. I am not
one of those legal scholars who thinks arguments are illegitimate because they do not seek to
maximize output. As noted, neither the case for or against family unification has much invoked
economics. The case for family unification normally speaks exclusively in the language of
affection and sentiment. I have no objection to such argument, but find it indeterminate, to put it
mildly. How close are you to your brothers and sisters? parents? Responses to these questions
vary sharply and provide little basis for drawing the preference lines in one place rather than
another.
IMMIGRATION AND THE FAMILY: RESEARCH AND POLICY ON U.S. IMMIGRANTS 260 (Alan Booth, Ann C Crouter &
Nancy Landale eds 1997).
9
So let us turn to the data attempting to link behavior to type of visa at admission. How
different are the characteristics of those on each visa? How many family members will the
median immigrant sponsor for future immigration? How does the economic performance of
different immigrants compare by type of visa?
The first thing we learn from the data are that the skills and education of immigrants to the
US do not differ sharply by type of visa. Since more visas are available for family members, this
has at times been the most efficient way of securing a visa for a trained professional who might
have qualified under another legal provision. Such visa strategies are endogenous to changing
policies and practices of visa administration. For example, when national origin quotas were
eliminated in 1964, relatively few Asians had a US citizen parent, child, or sibling to sponsor
them. The first generation typically arrived under employer sponsorship, but this ratio did not
last long, as that first generation soon sponsored the migration of their parents, children, and
siblings. By the early 1970s, the majority of migration from Asia was on family unification
visas, including thousands of professionals who, in education and profession, were similar to the
relatives who sponsored them.39
I think it important to confront directly the power of images. “Immigrant on family
unification visa” is a good example of an abstract category that, the cognitive scientists tell us,
can be grasped in the brain only through the image of a prototype.40 I think that our mental
pictures of visa categories are likely to reflect racial and ethnic stereotypes. I have not done any
research. I am speaking precisely for myself here, identifying a habit of thought that is both
necessary, and necessary to struggle against. When I have to picture an immigrant sponsored by
an employer, I form a mental image of an engineer from Asia, often the father portrayed by
Irrfan Khan in the movie The Namesake. This is probably common and in my case surely
reflects my earlier research and interviews in Silicon Valley.41 And when I say “family
unification immigrant,” my mind typically flashes to the family checking in ahead of me the last
time I flew Aeromexico, returning to be with family in Mexico, checking enormous, strangelywrapped parcels while a great many children raced around JFK airport. Even though I obviously
have no knowledge of this family’s immigration status, the experience of waiting in line after
their protracted check-in made the image indelible. I expect that most readers will have similar
visual prototypes, irrespective of the reader’s politics or ethnicity. But, obviously, Asian
engineers have parents and siblings, and Latinos have skills sought by employers, and we cannot
assume from their position in the US economy that we know what sort of visa brought them to
39
John M. Liu, The Contours of Asian Professional, Technical and Kindred Work Immigration, 1965-1988, 35
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 673, 696 (1992). For example, between 1971 and 1984, the number of immigrants
from the Philippines who entered on family unification visas nearly doubled, while the number admitted through
employer sponsorship declined by three-quarters, so that by 1984, over 16 thousand Filipinos migrated through
family sponsorship, while only 1503 migrated in occupational preference categories. Gordon F. DeJong, Brenda
Davis Root, and Ricardo G. Abad, Family Reunification and Philippine Migration to the United States: The
Immigrants’ Perspective, 20 INT’L MIGRATION REV. 598, 600 (1986). The family visa group, however, included
many trained professionals, Liu at 690 (Table 3d). Similarly, James T. Fawcett, Benjamin V. Cariño, Insook Han
Park, & Robert W. Gardner. SELECTIVITY AND DIVERSITY: THE EFFECT OF U.S. IMMIGRATION POLICY ON
IMMIGRANT CHARACTERISTICS (1990), surveyed Koreans and Filipinos who entered in 1986. A high proportion of
those admitted on family unification visas possessed high level skills.
40
The classic examples are bird, for which people picture a robin, or furniture, for which people picture a chair.
Eleanor Rosch [which paper? 1970s]
41
Hyde, supra n.4.
10
the US, particularly, as noted, given the numerical domination of family unification visas even
for Asian immigrants.
Second, the data clearly dispel a common trope of the political forces opposed to family
unification: fear of so-called “chain migration.” The fear is that each immigrant admitted can
potentially sponsor dozens if not hundreds of siblings and children, who in turn sponsor their
spouses, and the spouses’ siblings and children, and so on.42 While theoretically possible, this
bears no resemblance to the actual behavior of immigrants to the US, each of whom over a
lifetime will sponsor, on average, 1.2 family members.43
Third, how well do immigrants on different visas perform? A handful of studies use different
estimation techniques to attempt to compare immigrant economic performance by type of visa.
Jasso and Rosenzweig found little difference in skills (meaning education levels) at the time of
entry. Entrants on family unification visas resemble the family members who sponsored them.44
Recent papers by these authors use the New Immigrant Survey to assemble a clearer picture of
sponsorship by recent immigrants. Sponsorship is interestingly related to sending remittances. It
appears that recent immigrants sponsor for immigration their more educated children, which the
authors interpret as maximizing return to the family, since those more educated children will do
the best in the US labor market, with its rewards for education. Less-educated children remain in
the country of origin and receive remittances from their US-based parents and siblings. “Thus we
find that family reunification is positively selective on skill…”45
Duleep and Regets compared economic performance, by country of origin, of cohorts who
entered in years with relatively greater or lesser proportion of family unification visas. Cohorts
with high percentages of family unification immigrants made less money on arrival but
converged with the normal over time, that is, had relatively high earnings growth. They also
observed a high positive correlation in the percentage admitted as siblings, and both years of
education (for immigrants from Asian and Latin America), and propensity to start a business.
42
This fear may have led the 1970s Select Commission, generally receptive to expanding family unification, to
discuss, though eventually not recommend, limits on sponsoring siblings. As its chairman, Rev. Theodore
Hesburgh, stated: [get quote of 84 migrants]. US Select Commission on Immigration, (1981). Try to read this
sentence without fashioning a mental image of a large Latin American family like the one in line ahead of me at
Aeromexico.
43
“Historically, a new immigrant will, ultimately, sponsor 1.2 dependents.” B. Lindsay Lowell & Micah Bump,
Projecting Immigrant Visas: Report on an Experts’ Meeting at 6 (Sept 2006)(held at Georgetown U to reconcile
competing Congressional estimates),
http://www12.georgetown.edu/sfs/isim/Event%20Summaries&Speeches/Lowell,%20ProjectionsWorkshop.pdf.
Accord, Error! Main Document Only.Bin Yu. CHAIN MIGRATION EXPLAINED: THE POWER OF THE IMMIGRATION
MULTIPLIER (2008)(Error! Main Document Only.each employment-related immigrant from Middle East, Latin
America or Africa sponsors on average 1.3 family members; from Europe and Asia, 1.1).
44
Guilllermina Jasso & Mark R. Rosenzweig, Do Immigrants Screened for Skills Do Better Than Family
Reunification Immigrants?, 29 INT’L MIG REV 85-111 (1995).
45
Guillermina Jasso & Mark R. Rosenzweig, Remit or Reunify?: US Immigrant Parents, Remittances, and the
Sponsorship of Children 4, 18-21 (Presented at the Research Conference on Remittances and Immigration, Federal
Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Nov 2010).
11
The authors interpret the data on business startups as showing the importance of siblings’
financial and social capital in immigrant business startups. (We will return to this finding). 46
Scholars analyzing data from Canada and Australia, where family unification migrants
comprise a smaller proportion of the total, have similarly found little difference in skills at entry
between immigrants admitted for skills and immigrants admitted for family unification.47
Finally, other studies exploit the difference between the American preference for family
unification, and the Canadian and Australian preference for education, and compare results.
Perhaps surprisingly, a points system like Australia’s or Canada’s does not result in immigrants
that are higher-earning, educated, or more proficient in English, than US system, once country of
origin is controlled for.48
Some studies observe bigger differences among immigrants by type of visa. While as noted,
Jennifer Hunt found some groups of immigrants admitted on student visas to surpass similar
native-born residents in economic performance, the same was not true of immigrants admitted on
family unification visas, who have labor market experiences similar to native-born citizens of
similar education.49
In 1980, the last year for which noncitizens were required to register annually, the
Immigration and Naturalization Service asked a random sample to list their class of admission.
These were matched with Social Security data. Immigrants who had been admitted during the
1970s on employment-sponsored visas earned more, and were more likely to be employed as
professionals, than immigrants sponsored by family members. This study was not published
until 1992, however, by which time it was clear to its authors that it represented a snapshot of the
1980 immigrant population, not a timeless verity. Employment-sponsored visas, half of which in
1976 went to professionals, came to include a higher percentage of less-skilled workers in the
1980s until this category was itself eliminated in 1990.50 I would also add that a 1980 snapshot
would have just begun to pick up the numerically-significant category of professionals from
India, Korea, and the Philippines who nevertheless entered, increasingly in the 1980s, under
family sponsorship.51 Despite these ways in which a 1980 snapshot might have exaggerated the
46
Harriet Orcutt Duleep & Mark C. Regets, Family Unification, Siblings, and Skills, in IMMIGRANTS AND
IMMIGRATION POLICY: INDIVIDUAL SKILLS, FAMILY TIES, AND GROUP IDENTITIES 219-44 (Harriet Orcutt Duleep &
Phanindra V. Wunnava eds. 1996). The correlation between admission as a sibling and years of education is
consistent with the sources cited n.39 on the propensity of the first Asian professional or managerial immigrant to
sponsor siblings who are similar to the first migrant in education. Recall that admission of siblings would have been
eliminated in the 2007 proposal.
47
Deborah A. Cobb-Clark, Do Selection Criteria Make a Difference?: Visa Category and the Labour Market Status
of Immigrants to Australia, 16 ECON.RECORD 18-31 (2000)(entrants on family visas make a little less on arrival but
differences dissipate over time); Arnold De Silva, Earnings of Immigrant Classes in the Early 1980s in Canada: A
Reexamination, 23 CANAD.PUB.POL’Y 179 (1997)(rapid convergence in earnings among immigrants in Canada
despite visa category).
48
Heather Antecol, Deborah A. Cobb-Clark, & Stephen J. Trejo, Immigration Policy and the Skills of Immigrants to
Australia, Canada, and the United States, 38 J.HUM.RESOURCES 192-218 (2003).
49
Hunt, supra n.5.
50
Elaine Sorensen, Frank D. Bean, Leighton Ku, and Wendy Zimmermann. IMMIGRANT CATEGORIES AND THE U.S.
JOB MARKET: DO THEY MAKE A DIFFERENCE? 3 (1992).
51
Supra n.39
12
economic advantages to employer sponsorship, the differences were still not great. Familysponsored migrants were just as likely to work as employer-sponsored migrants, and were less
likely to be taking jobs from U.S. workers or exerting negative effect on their compensation.52
So the picture is cloudy. But isn’t there something perverse about these studies that find little
or no difference in the economic performance between migrants specifically selected for their
skills, typically meaning education, and migrants selected for family ties that have no necessary
relation to skills? How can it be that letting employers select for skills admits immigrants who
differ only slightly from those admitted by relatives? We noted the suggestion of Jasso and
Rosenzweig that US-based parents are more likely to sponsor their more educated children,53 but
surely this is only a small part of the story.
A bigger part of the story is that immigrants who arrive sponsored by family arrive with
networks and connections. This is why, irrespective of visa (or even whether their migration is
authorized at all), migrants with family ties do better than similar migrants who lack them.54
Immigrants who arrive sponsored by employers have a connection with that employer, but not
necessarily anywhere else in the economy. And immigrants who arrive in Canada or Australia
under those countries’ points system have no necessary connection with anyone in the
economy—and their dismal economic performance reflects this. Recall that the McCainKennedy agreement in 2007 would have reallocated visas from family unification to a new
points system on the Canadian model. Adoption of such a Canadian system, long a favorite of
George Borjas, was a major Republican demand in the 2007 debates. Examining the failures of
that system—as Congressional Republicans refused to do in 2007--will help set the stage for our
search in Part V for a richer economic theory of immigrants’ economic performance.
The Canadian points system in place in 2007 was a disaster, precisely because it admits
migrants on the basis of degrees and work experience, without any assurance that there is any
need for these “skills” in the Canadian economy.The system was heavily backlogged. In 2007,
800,000 applications were pending, with wait times of 4 years or more.55 Without any need for
Sorensen et al, supra n.50, at 4. “U.S. worker,” by the way, is a statutory term that comprises, not only U.S
citizens and nationals, but all those authorized to work in the US, including lawful permanent residents, refugees,
asylees, and noncitizens admitted in order to work. INA Sec. 212(t)(4)(D), 8 USC Sec. 1182(t)(4)(D). In popular
discussion, this concern is often expressed as “taking a job from an American,” but use of the statutory term “United
States worker” is not only legally more accurate, and generous; it captures the phenomenon that those who might be
at risk from the wrong kind of immigration might well be recent migrants themselves, not Americans, and the
statute’s concern about this.
53
Supra n.45.
52
"Familial ties raise unauthorized and legal migrants’ hourly wages by an average of 2.6% and 8%, respectively,
and friendship ties increase their wages by 5.4% and 3.6%, correspondingly. Furthermore, family ties seem to
comparatively favor legal migrants in terms of earnings, raising their wages by approximately 0.9% more than for
similar unauthorized migrants. These results underscore the potentially important role of social networks in raising
Mexican migrants’ earnings, particularly among unauthorized migrants." Andrew Halpern-Manners, The Effect of
Family Member Migration on Education and Work Among Nonmigrant Youth in Mexico, 48 DEMOGRAPHY 73
(2011).
54
55
(NYT 6/27/07)
13
employer sponsorship, thousands apply. Most importantly, the program admits engineers,
physicians, and other highly-educated migrants without any concern for whether these skills are
needed in the Canadian economy or these degrees valued by Canadian employers. The result is
that shockingly few of these professionals ever practice their professions in Canada. I had heard
the Vancouver joke that, if you need to see a doctor in a hurry, go the curb and yell “Taxi!” This
turns out to be no joke at all. A physician from India who migrates to Canada has a 19% chance
of working as doctor during five years after admission; from Eastern Europe 8%, China 4%,
Philippines 3%. Only 65% of Canadian economic immigrants are working at all, fewer than
30% as professionals.56 While the Canadian points system at that time thus admitted thousands
of engineers and physicians to Canadian unemployment, it was neither flexible nor efficient
enough to obtain oil field workers for Alberta, who must be skilled, but do not typically have
advanced degrees. As a result, such oil field workers, and other skilled workers without graduate
degrees, are admitted to Canada as temporary workers, even though their jobs are in no sense
temporary and even though this opens up possibilities for abuse of the worker.57 Republican
obduracy in insisting on the adoption of a points system in the US is, obviously, the triumph of
ideology over evidence. This Article will anatomize that ideology: it is envious of paper skills
and blind to the more important indicia of economic success: ties, networks, family support,
child care.
IV.
The Economic Critique of Family Unification
So the data present us with a puzzle. Immigrants admitted because employers want them, or
because they are well-educated, should, it would seem, logically do better economically than
immigrants who gain admission simply because they are related to US residents. This would
seem to be one of those assumptions that should just naturally be true, and it certainly sounds
plausible to many people of good will who want nothing but what is best for the US economy.
Yet the data instead suggest that the differences are not great between the economic performance
of US migrants admitted under family sponsorship and US migrants admitted under employer
sponsorship, while attempts to admit strictly for degrees omit an important dimension.
56
Lesleyanne Hawthorne, Labour Market Outcomes for Migrant Professionals: Canada and Australia Compared
(CIC Canada Dec 06) www.cic.gc.ca/ENGLISH/resources/research/2006-canada-australia.asp . This blistering
report on the Canadian points system from a former Australian immigration official was, with commendable
honesty, commissioned by the Canadian government and placed by them on their web site. Would that immigration
agencies in the US were so interested in the results of their policies and so willing to share their findings with the
public. The Hawthorne report was available during the 2007 debates in the US but played no part in them.
57
Delphine Nakashe & Paula J. Kinoshita, The Canadian Temporary Foreign Worker Program: Do Short-Term
Economic Needs Prevail over Human Rights Concerns? (May 2010) www.irpp.org. Canadian employers who need
skilled labor now avoid the points system. In addition to getting workers admitted as temporary migrants, the
employers also use provincial certification, which the US lacks. The Canadians have revised their points system
since 2007, partly in response to these criticisms. For example, a new class, outside the points system, was created
in 2010 for “Canadian experience” as temporary worker or student worker, which is a way of reintroducing the
needs of employers. Arthur Sweetman & Casey Warman, A New Source of Immigration: The Canadian Experience
Class, POLICY OPTIONS (July/August 2010) at 58.
14
The critique of family unification visas is true tautologically under a human capital
framework. Since the purpose of Parts V and VI will be to broaden or supplant such models, I
feel I owe human capital models a decent introduction.
Legal readers are familiar with the basic outlines of human capital economics, though the
concept-metaphor is normally introduced without any indication of how controversial it is within
the labor economics profession.58 Human capital models originated to explain why individuals
or societies invest in education. Instead of treating this as consumption, a human capital model
treats it as an investment. If it is a rational investment, it must pay returns. In human capital
models, individual earnings in labor markets are entirely explained as returns on each
individual’s investments. “[T]he essence of human capital theory is that the job is unimportant.
Wages and wealth are determined by the individuals’ skills. Occupation and industry variables
are secondary and almost an embarrassment to the theory.”59 Thus, the proposition that the
migrant with advanced degrees should be expected to earn more than the migrant who lacks
them is not an empirical question in a human capital model. It is tautologically true under the
assumptions of the model. Since the data suggest otherwise, we need to broaden the assumption
that economic success is entirely a function of degrees held.
Human capital models cannot explain migration. If we must model human capital as an
asset, it is a peculiar one. Normally assets are worth more in markets in which supply is scarce.
Human capital, by contrast, is worth more in markets in which supply is plentiful, and thus
migrates from labor markets in which it is scarce, to labor markets in which it is plentiful, as this
author has pointed out.60
V Economic Theory of Family Migration: Interpreting the Data Through Three Economic
Theories
The reader undoubtedly has intuited that the economic case for family unification will
involve treating the family (rather than the individual) as the unit of analysis; understanding the
role of networks and personal ties in labor markets; and properly valuing unpaid labor. At the
risk of belaboring what to some readers will be obvious, let me sketch some of the substantial
58
Edward P. Lazear, PERSONNEL ECONOMICS (1995), is an elegant demolition of human capital models of labor
markets. Lazear, by the way, is the US’s most prominent neo-classical labor economist, who chaired the Council of
Economic Advisers in the second administration of President George W. Bush. There is absolutely nothing leftwing about skepticism of human capital.
59
Lazear, supra n.58, at 78.
60
Hyde, supra n.4, at 126. See Robert E. Lucas, On the Mechanics of Economic Development, 22 J. MONETARY
ECON. 3, (1988). Life has dealt us excellent empirical demonstration of this point. Michael Clemens, The Roots of
Global Wage Gaps: Evidence from Randomized Processing of US Visas (Center for Global Development Working
Paper 212, June 2010)(internal personnel files of large Indian software development firm; employees who lose the
H-1B lottery are assigned to the same team, working from India, and make one-sixth as much as their otherwise
identical colleagues in the US). It could not be clearer that returns in a labor market with international migration
reflect networks and institutions more than human capital as such. Human capital theorists normally explain all
observed unequal treatment of workers as reflecting differences in “unobserved human capital.” In fact, I have
argued that justifying unequal treatment is the most frequent function of human capital arguments in labor
economics. The beauty of the Clemens paper is the completely random treatment of similar employees, an
experiment that can rarely be performed in the real world.
15
economic literature on just these three points. These are well-established moves in economic
analysis. They just haven’t been applied to understand the economic performance of migrants.
To make sense of the above data and explain why family migration is usually
economically successful, we must add:
A. Methodological individualism (neoclassical) should be supplemented or replaced by New
Economics of Migration (discussed Part VA).
B. Models in which immigrants necessarily substitute for domestic labor must largely be
replaced by models of complementary labor (discussed Part VB).
C. Family economics: Understanding the economics of unpaid intrafamily care and unpaid
contributions to family businesses (discussed Part VC).
A. New Economics of Migration: Families are Economic Units
If one starts from the assumption that the only economic actors who matter, in migration
or anything else, are individuals (methodological individualism), then it would seem
uncontroversial that such isolates should be as skilled as possible. It would just be irrational to
prefer an unskilled migrant over a skilled migrant. Such methodological individualism is
normally a part of a human capital analysis. On this view, decisions whether or not to migrate
are made by individual maximizers familiar from economic theory. They weigh the costs and
benefits of migrating and migrate when the benefits outweigh the costs. Such models face an
immediate embarrassment. They would seem to overpredict the amount of migration that we
observe. Almost everyone in the world could substantially increase his or her earnings by
moving to the US.61 Why don’t all these individual maximizers, maximize their way to the US
or a similarly-developed economy?62
Much economic analysis of immigration by professional economists solves these
problems within a framework styled family investment models or the “New Economics of
Migration.”63 In this framework, the principal economic actors are families, sometimes
61
In the Clemens study cited supra n.60, the programmers from India who win the random lottery for H-1B visas
sextuple their earnings over the lottery losers who stay in India and do the same work on the same team.
62
Borjas, supra n. 26[Heaven’s Door]: “Why do relatively few persons bother to migrate to the United States?
Mainly because it is costly to immigrate. The costs include the expense of transporting the household across
thousands of miles and looking for new employment, as well as the psychological burden of leaving family and
friends behind and of becoming aliens in a strange land. As a result, the immigrants are typically the persons who
have the most to gain from moving—because only those who gain the most would be willing to incur the substantial
migration costs.” There is zero empirical support for this assertion. There is no literature suggesting that such costs
of moving or transition are all that burdensome, or, properly discounted, outweigh the likely economic benefits of
moving. These are not empirical findings. They do not rest on interviews with migrants or government data. They
are formal requirements of a neoclassical methodological individualism.
63
See, e.g., Oded Stark. THE MIGRATION OF LABOR (1991)(collecting papers); Oded Stark & David E. Bloom, The
New Economics of Labor Migration, 75 AM.ECON.REV.PAPERS & PROCEEDINGS 173 (1985)(brief introduction);
Oded Stark & Robert E.B. Lucas, Migration, Remittances, and the Family, 36 ECON.DEVEL.& CULTURAL CHANGE
465 (1988)(remittances modeled as long-term contract between migrant and family and covering education and
decision to migrate; consistent with data from Botswana); Oded Stark & J. Edward Taylor, Relative Deprivation and
16
communities, not individuals. Individuals normally live in the world with ties to others and it is
only an economist’s coup de main that severs these. It turns out that this coup de main does not
improve the analysis.
In the New Economics of Migration, households diversify investment, and protect against
risk, by having family members work in different labor markets. The source of income matters
lest the family be at risk when a shock to one labor market results in lost income for all family
members.
While neither framework is without value, the New Economics certainly does a better job
explaining the immigration that we observe. In a neoclassical model, individual maximizers
perform cost-benefit analyses of staying or going. Since nearly everyone in the world would
make more money in the US than at home, why don’t all these maximizers move? The model
requires, as we have seen, an assumption, that individuals place enormous subjective costs on
moving (or benefits to staying), just to get off the ground.64 The New Economics better explains
observed migration, which so frequently involves young people traveling long distances and
sending remittances home. The New Economics also better explains migration patterns from
Mexico.65 Migrants do not come from the poorest regions of Mexico, individuals for whom
migration would represent the greatest ratio of benefit to cost. They come from midsize towns
and cities, where diversification is particularly rational.66
But if the New Economics understands migration as family diversification, how does it
understand the family decision to reunite in a foreign land—seemingly the opposite of
diversification? We will postpone this analysis until we get a few more economic tools onto the
table, but, as we have already hinted, family unification, like emigration, is a rational family
investment strategy, for example when it represents intrafamily division of complementary labor
(one relative watches the others’ children), or similar division of labor in ethnic networks or
communities. We will see that most economic behavior by immigrants, such as business
formation and women’s labor force participation, is best modeled as the result of family
investment decisions rather than decisions by individuals.
B. Immigrants Complement Rather Than Substitute for US Labor. Network models of labor
markets vs. human capital models.
The analyst who demands that each individual migrant be individually skilled (possess
high human capital) is necessarily assuming that the migrant is likely to replace a US worker
doing the same job. Under this assumption, but only under this assumption, immigration policy
must steadfastly ensure that the replacement have higher skills, not merely lower wages.
International Migration, 26 DEMOGRAPHY 1 (1989)(Mexican families select for undocumented emigration
individuals who will maximize household income; individuals who will do the best in Mexican labor market do not
migrate).
64
Borjas, supra n.62.
65
Stark & Taylor, supra n.63.
66
Douglas S. Massey, Jorge Durand, & Nolan J. Malone. BEYOND SMOKE AND MIRRORS: MEXICAN IMMIGRATION
IN AN ERA OF ECONOMIC INTEGRATION 66 (2002).
17
The assumption that immigrants typically replace (substitute for) native labor is another
one of those assumptions that has been substantially exploded in the economic literature.67 It
cannot explain the immigration that we observe, which so often exploits the gains from networks
of complementary labor. The point is well established in the economic literature.
In a world of globalized communication technology, human capital theory cannot explain
migration at all. We have noted that a software developer who wins the lottery for an H-1B
visa—let’s call him Rajiv-- will make six times as much in California as his identically-educated
coworker who works on the same team in India. Rajiv has the same human capital in San Jose as
in Bangalore. The only point in bringing him from Bangalore to San Jose is that he will be more
productive in San Jose, and that can only be because the proximity to other individuals on his
team, in his firm, or across firm lines68 will make him more productive. Without those networks,
his human capital, which we assume to be high, is worth no more in San Jose than in Bangalore.
Inside those networks, his earnings will sextuple in the US.69 Obviously the migrant is not
substituting for a native developer. (We might be more concerned that the poorly-paid developer
in India, like other foreign labor to whom work is outsourced, substitutes for US labor). Rajiv is
more valuable in San Jose because of his position in networks.
As noted, most professional labor economists understand that compensation in labor
markets partly reflects institutional characteristics, not merely individuals’ human capital.70 I
believe that I am the first to describe labor markets as networks, in what might not be a felicitous
metaphor.71 The idea is to analogize labor markets to markets that economists have analyzed,
such as the markets for communication technology, in which the value of an asset increases as
the supply increases. In the classic aphorism, one telephone is an expensive paperweight.72
With two one can communicate, and the telephone is worth more with each user. Markets for
information exhibit similar network effects: increasing returns to scale under which information
becomes more valuable if shared.73 Similarly, as we have seen, high human capital workers
maximize gains from that human capital by migrating from regions where it is scarce to regions
where it is plentiful, at which point they compliment, not substitute for local labor. The use of
the term “network” is only a metaphor, since in a labor market, unlike a market for information,
the marginal cost of reproducing a unit never becomes zero.
Giovanni Peri, Immigrants’ Complementarities and Native Wages: Evidence from California, National Bureau of
Economic Research Working Paper 1295 (March 2007)(immigration to California increases demand for
complementary US work); Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano & Giovanni Peri, Rethinking the Gains from Immigration:
Theory and Evidence from the U.S., National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 11672 (September
2005)(US metropolitan areas with heavy immigration show increased average wages for native workers); Giovanni
Peri & Chad Sparber, Task Specialization, Immigration and Wages, Centro Studi Luca D’Agliano Development
Studies Working Paper 252 (June 2008)(as immigrants take jobs requiring physical labor, US workers take better,
complementary jobs requiring communication skills).
68
Cf. AnnaLee Saxenian, REGIONAL ADVANTAGE: CULTURE AND COMPETITION IN SILICON VALLEY AND ROUTE 128
(1994)(identifying Silicon Valley’s comparative advantage as the transmission of information across firm
boundaries).
69
Clemens, supra n.60.
70
Lazear, supra n.58
71
Hyde, supra n.4.
72
Source?
73
Carl Shapiro & Hal R. Varian, INFORMATION RULES: A STRATEGIC GUIDE TO THE NETWORK ECONOMY (1999).
67
18
However, it is a powerful metaphor. Understanding high-tech labor markets makes it
clear that this industry, which heavily employs immigrant labor, hires for networks, not for
human capital; for complementary, not replacement, labor. If Rajiv continues to work in
information technology in California, he will, if he is like the median IT professional, work for
his employer for six months.74 However, Rajiv will continue to be of value to his old employer
even if he leaves after six months. His old employer’s patent applications will be much likelier
to cite patents from the firms to which Rajiv moves.75 His old employer will call Rajiv for
advice about problems they both face.76 His old employer may outsource work to Rajiv’s new
employer or perhaps to Rajiv himself, perhaps if he returns to India and starts a firm to handle
jobs outsourced from outside India.77 The economic importance of these, and other, channels of
diffusing information across firm and national boundaries through employee mobility, explains
the significant advantage in economic and technological growth that is achieved when
jurisdictions forbid enforcement of covenants not to compete.78
Most observed immigration to the United States follows this pattern: the migrant’s skills
complement, rather than substitute for, labor already being performed in the US. (We can be
confident of this because, when US employers actually want to replace US workers with cheaper
foreign labor, they do not embark on the expensive uncertainty of obtaining visas, often
including the bizarre and cumbersome certification process of the US Department of Labor.
Employers that want to replace US workers with cheaper foreign labor outsource work to foreign
facilities or employers. This is done openly, notoriously, and completely without shame; it does
not require certification from the US Department of Labor or the approval of any other
governmental agency or labor union; and normally is rewarded in financial markets’ valuation of
company shares).
In short, it is easy to misunderstand the economic contribution even of immigrants
sponsored by employers. Their contribution often reflects their position in networks and ability
to complement existing labor. So it will not be surprising to find exactly these overlooked
mechanisms at work when visas are issued to family members, who arrive networked in the
economy and almost never displace U.S. labor. In other words, were the U.S. to adopt some
variant of the Canadian points system (something I do not recommend), issuing visas to
74
Bruce Fallick, Charles A. Fleischman, & James B. Rebitzer, Job Hopping in Silicon Valley: Some Evidence
Concerning the Micro-foundations of a High Technology Cluster, 88 REV. ECON.& STAT. 472 (2006). We had
assumed that Rajiv had been awarded an H-1B visa, issued for three years and renewable once. If Rajiv wishes to
stay in the US, he will need the sponsorship of a US employer so will be constrained in his mobility during the
period of the H-1B visa.
75
Rafael A. Corredoira & Lori Rosenkopf, Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?: The Reverse Transfer of
Knowledge through Mobility Ties, 31 STRATEGIC MGT J.159 (2010).
76
Sim B. Sitkin, Secrecy in Organizations: Determinants of Secrecy Behavior among Engineers in Three Silicon
Valley Semiconductor Firms. Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University (1986).
77
William R. Kerr, Ethnic Scientific Communities and International Technology Diffusion, 90 REV. ECON.&
STAT.518 (2008).
78
Sampsa Samila & Olav Sorenson, Noncompete Covenants: Incentives to Innovate or Impediments to Growth, 57
MGT.SCI. 425 (2011); Alan Hyde, Intellectual Property Justifications for Restricting Employee Mobility: A Critical
Appraisal in Light of the Economic Evidence, in RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON THE LAW AND ECONOMICS OF LABOR
AND EMPLOYMENT LAW 364-72 (Michael Wachter and Cynthia Estlund eds)(2012).
19
applicants who amass points for degrees and work experience, it –in order to avoid having
physicians drive cabs—would have to find a way of awarding points for ties and networks to the
U.S economy. Instead, we achieve this result by awarding visas instead to family members.79
C. Family economics
By “family economics” in this Article I mean only that women should be counted, and
that unpaid labor should be valued.80 In particular, women’s economic contributions often show
up, not in her earnings, but in the earnings of another: her husband, children, a family firm. Most
of the attention in feminist economics has gone to “unpaid domestic labor.”81 But women also
perform “unpaid market labor”, for example in family businesses, which is conceptually distinct
from “unpaid domestic labor.”82 Immigrants, as we shall see, are particularly likely to do both.83
VI.
Applying the theories: three common economic activities by immigrants
The relatively similar economic performance of immigrants sponsored by relatives to those
admitted for skills may now be explained. In almost every context, family migrants arrive
networked; complement rather than substitute for domestic labor; take jobs that advance family
investment rather than individual advancement; and may make economic contributions that are
not paid as such but show up in increased earnings for family members or family businesses.
We will discuss three particularly common contexts for these observed economic results:
immigrants who (A) care for children and other family members; (B) work in family businesses;
or (C) support other family members who are in school or building family businesses. These are
all “family investment” models. Immigrants who care for children, or build family businesses,
79
Carmenza Gallo & Thomas R. Bailey, Social Networks and Skill-Based Immigration Policy, in Duleep &
Wunnava, supra n.46, at 203-17. They note four general types of information provided to immigrants by family and
other informal social networks: 1. housing and other aspects of economic survival. 2. job recruitment: many jobs
held by immigrants recruit entirely through networks, eg. nonunion construction, restaurants. 3. Skills:
entrepreneurial; cooking; construction. 4. cultural information on how to deal with people. This Article will discuss
others.
80
Counting women may seem obvious but many is the study that follows normal social science practice by
examining only men, e.g. Duleep & Regets, supra n.46. Counting women, and valuing unpaid work, are also
associated with “feminist economics.” I have no objection to that term, but this Article does not make use of the
more radical aspects of feminist economics, such as the critiques of objectivity and rationality, see [research
handbook on feminist economics].
81
Nancy Folbre, Children as Public Goods, 84 AM.ECON.REV.PAPERS & PROCEEDINGS 86 (1994)(reviewing
theories of who pays for child care); special issue of FEMINIST ECONOMICS (1996) on valuing unpaid labor.
82
Lisa Philipps, Silent Partners: The Role of Unpaid Market Labor in Families, 14 FEMINIST ECON. 37 (2008);
Barbara R. Rowe & Gong-Soog Hong, The Role of Wives in Family Businesses: The Paid and Unpaid Work of
Women, 13 FAMILY BUS. REV. 1 (2000)(national survey of several thousand households; more wives work outside
family businesses than in them; some do both).
83
Kwang Chung Kim & Won Moo Hurh, The Burden of Double Roles: Korean Wives in the USA, 11 ETHNIC &
RACIAL STUD. 151 (1988).
20
function economically as part of a family, and seek to maximize family income or growth. They
may be paid little or nothing, and thus their economic contribution will be systematically
underestimated in snapshots limited to immigrants’ earned income in their first year after
migration.
A. Caring for Children
Should Congress ever eliminate, as it nearly did in 2007, visas for parents, the immediate
impact would be a radical decrease in the availability of child care for immigrant and native
families. Working families in the US are heavily dependent on relatives for child care; Latina
families are even more dependent; and immigrant families seem to be particularly heavy users of
relatives for child care. Moreover, immigrants also disproportionately perform paid child care
and thus contribute to increased earnings for working mothers.
The Government collects good data on who is caring for America’s children through several
instruments: the Census; a special Early Childhood Program Participation Survey; and the
Survey of Income and Program Participation. In addition, private groups, such as the Urban
Institute, conduct their own research. All their findings are broadly similar and I will not discuss
technical differences among the studies that might account for the relatively slight
disagreements.
1. Working families rely heavily on relatives
For many working families, child care is grandma and nobody else. The US, unlike many
European countries, does not routinely provide free public preschool education. Among all US
children of pre-school age, 26.3% receive care exclusively from parents; 57.2% are in some kind
of organized program; 22.6% receive care from other relatives; and only 11.6% receive any care
from a nonrelative.84 When mother works and the child is pre-school aged, grandparents and
organized programs are just about equal, each reaching about 30% of such children. When
mothers work, fathers care for 25% (fewer than grandmothers), siblings for 3%, and other
relatives 8%. 85 Nationally, close to half of all grandparents provide some child care assistance,
averaging 23 hours per week.86
The Urban Institute recently looked in depth at child care arrangements among working
families in Providence and Seattle. Sixty percent of the families in the survey contained an
immigrant parent, but these families were broadly similar to the others in the survey. Two-thirds
84
Statistical Abstract of the US 2012, Table 578, at 370, http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/12statab/socins.pdf.
(Early Childhood Program Participation Survey).
85
Nearly Half of Preschoolers Receive Child Care from Relatives, US Census Bureau News Release February 28,
2008, http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/children/cb08-31.html (Survey of Income and Program
Participation). (Some children receive care from more than one source).
86
Lina Guzman, The Use of Grandparents as Child Care Providers, National Survey of Families and Households
Working Paper 84(1998); Lina Guzman, Grandma and Grandpa Taking Care of the Kids: Patterns of Involvement
(Child Trends Research Brief July 2004).
21
of these working families depended on family members for child care.87 Other countries of
heavy immigration have similar experiences.88
2. Latina families depend on family members for child care even more than other working
families
The Government’s surveys on child care arrangements do not specifically distinguish
immigrant families. They do, however, break out Latina, African-American, and Asian families
for separate analysis. Since Latinos in recent years have been the largest group of migrants to
the US, we can use these surveys as a rather noisy look at immigrant families, particularly since,
as we shall see momentarily, the surveys directed at immigrant families confirm the picture. 89
Latina families, for reasons on which there is no consensus, are particularly low users of
formal child care programs, and particularly high users of family members for child care.
The survey of all preschool children reveals that Hispanic families are low users of formal
programs and nonrelative care: 90
All preschool children
Parents exclusively
26.3%
Other relatives
22.6
Organized programs
57.2
Nonrelatives
11.6
Hispanic preschool children
38.0%
22.7
43.4
8.1
Similarly, the survey limited to preschool children of working mothers shows heavy
Hispanic reliance on family members, less on formal programs:91
All preschool children
Parents exclusively
24.8%
Grandparents
20.9
Siblings and Other Relatives 6.3
Day Care Centers
19.2
Hispanic preschool children
25.4%
28.5
13.1
12.8
87
Ajay Chaudry et al, CHILD CARE CHOICES OF LOW-INCOME WORKING FAMILIES 45(Urban Institute 2011)
“Grandparents are the most popular form of childcare in Australia today.” Bridget Jenkins, Grandparent
Childcare in Australia: A Literature Review, at 1
http://www.uws.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/156339/Jenkins.pdf
89
Over half of the US foreign-born population was born in Latin America. Yesenia D. Acosta & G. Patricia de la
Cruz, The Foreign Born from Latin America and the Caribbean 2010, American Community Survey Briefs,
September 2011, http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr10-15.pdf
90
Data on all preschool children (without regard to mother’s work status): Statistical Abstract of the United States
2012, at 370 (Table 578). http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0578.pdf
88
United States Census, Who’s Minding the Kids: Child Care Arrangements Spring 2010, Table 2A, Primary Child
Care Arrangements of Preschoolers Under 5 Years Old Living With Employed Mothers by Selected Characteristics,
http://www.census.gov/hhes/childcare/data/sipp/2010/tables.html
91
22
. Only among Hispanic families is child care by aunts and older sisters statistically significant;
for white and Afro-American families such arrangements are rare. It is precisely such adult
siblings who are the most frequent targets of proposals to trim family visas.92
3. Immigrant families, particularly Latina and Asian, are heavy users of family child care
The last US Census to ask respondents their country of birth was 2000. 93 While the Census
web site does not make it easy to search only among families with a foreign-born member, a
team of demographers at the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis SUNY Albany has
helpfully done so for some data categories. They broke out, as “immigrant families,” families
with at least one foreign-born parent. Children in immigrant families are significantly more
likely to live with two parents: 84% of children in immigrant families vs. 76% of children in allnative families. 94 Children in immigrant families are two to four times more likely than children
in native European-American families to have a grandparent in the home.95 And, among some
immigrant groups, aunts and uncles living in the home is common: 25-37% of children in
families with at least one parent from Mexico, Central America, Caribbean, South America,
Philippines, Indochina, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Africa. Again, it is precisely
these elderly parents, and siblings (that is, aunts and uncles), who were targeted for elimination
of visa eligibility in earlier legislative proposals. Immigrants are also low users of formal
programs and concomitantly highly reliant on family members for child care.96 One working
immigrant (ethnicity alas undisclosed), “Brianna, whose sister takes care of her daughter,
assumed that her sister would be available purely on account of their relationship. When asked
92
It is not important for present purposes to pin down exactly why Latina families are such heavy users of family
child care and low users of formal programs. Several theories compete in the literature. Latino cultural acceptance
of family day care is greater than for non-Latinos. Lynet Uttal, Using Kin for Child Care: Embedment in the
Socioeconomic Networks of Extended Families, 61 J.MARRIAGE & FAMILY 845 (1999). This cultural difference
theory would seem to gain support from the finding that reliance on family members does not decline as Latino
immigrant families become wealthier, more acculturated, or proficient in English. Nevertheless, these authors reject
the cultural difference theory and are at pains to insist that Latino use of relatives mainly reflects the age and lifecycle position of the current Latino population of the US. Susan Blank and Ramon S. Torrecilha, Understanding the
Living Arrangements of Latino Immigrants: A Life Course Approach, 32 INT’L MIGRATION REV. 3 (1998). Finally,
it appears likely that Latino neighborhoods are underserved by formal programs. Andrew J. Fuligni & Allison Sidle
Fuligni, Immigrant Families and the Educational Development of Their Children, in IMMIGRANT FAMILIES IN
CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY 231, 242 (Jennifer E. Lansford, Kirby Deater-Deckard, & Marc H. Bornstein eds. 2007).
The point is that, were fewer visas available for grandparents and adult siblings, working families generally, and
Latina families in particular, would incur substantial costs. Mothers (and, to a lesser extent, fathers) would have to
reduce their working hours, and income.
93
The 2010 Census did not ask about country of birth. Researchers must use the much smaller samples of the
American Community Survey.
94
Donald J. Hernandez, Nancy A. Denton, and Suzanne E. Macartney, Family Circumstances of Children in
Immigrant Families: Looking to the Future of America, in IMMIGRANT FAMILIES IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY 9
(Jennifer E. Lansford, Kirby Deater-Deckard, & Marc H. Bornstein eds. 2007).
95
Hernandez et al, supra n.94, at 12.
96
Peter D. Brandon, The Child Care Arrangements of Preschool-Age Children in Immigrant Families in the United
States, 42 INT’L MIGRATION 65(2004)(low-income children of immigrants less likely to be in centers than lowincome counterparts).
23
how they came to an agreement where her sister would watch her daughter, Brianna said, ‘We
don’t agree. I just drop her off.’”97
Studies of the Asian immigrant population reveal the crucial role played by grandparents,
especially grandmothers, in child care. “[M]any Asian-American elders moved to the United
States to perform childcare tasks for daughters or daughters-in-law who work in a family
business.”98 While by this author’s reckoning, 11% of grandparents nationwide care for
grandchildren, the figure is three times that high for Asians.99 A survey of these grandparent
caregivers revealed that the majority lived with one or both of the grandchild’s parents.
Nearly all supplemented care by those parents but were not primary caregivers
themselves. Just over half cared for two grandchildren. The most common pattern was for
both parents to work in a family-owned small business and for grandparents to provide
child care during the day when both parents work.100
So when a U.S. citizen family succeeds in getting a visa for the wife’s mother to come
care for the grandchildren—typically to enable the wife to move to full-time employment—all
three of our alternative economic models are illustrated. The immigration decision represents a
family investment. Grandma performs labor that complements the labor of US workers, and
does not take a paying job from a US worker. And Grandma’s own labor is not compensated.
But how does this show up in the immigration statistics? Suppose for ease of illustration
that the visa sponsors are naturalized immigrants from Colombia and that Abuela is a Colombian
national. Abuela may never have finished high school. She arrives in the US on a muchmaligned “family preference” visa. She is a “low-skilled” or “unskilled” migrant. She may not
have been in the paid labor force in Colombia. She is definitely not in the paid labor force in the
US. Her tax returns will show earned income of zero in the year she arrives in the US, and every
year thereafter until she enrolls for Medicare. At this point, we may imagine that George Borjas
97
Chaudry et al, supra n.87, at 72. Other scenarios are in Judith Treas & Shampa Mazumdar, Kinkeeping and
Caregiving: Contributions of Older People in Immigrant Families, 35 J.COMP.FAMILY STUDIES 105 (2004); Judith
Treas, Transnational Older Adults and Their Families, 57 FAMILY RELATIONS 468 (2008).
98
Sung Min Yoon, The Characteristics and Needs of Asian-American Grandparent Caregivers: A Study of ChineseAmerican and Korean-American Grandparents in New York City, 44 J. GERONTOLOGICAL SOCIAL WORK 75, 87-88
(2005). “Another reason to think that family reunification is a net economic benefit is that older nonworking family
members are often an inexpensive form of child care. In fact, there is a significant correlation between age at arrival
and the presence of children under 18 in the household: an immigrant who arrived after age 55 on average lives in a
household with 0.44 more children." Wei-Yin Hu, Elderly Immigrants on Welfare, 33 J. HUM.RESOURCES 711, 734
(1998). See also Seungsook Moon, Immigration and Mothering: Case Studies from Two Generations of Korean
Immigrant Women, 17 GENDER AND SOCIETY 840 (2003); Wei Wei Da, Transnational Grandparenting: Child Care
Arrangments Among Migrants from the People’s Republic of China to Australia, 4 J. INT'L MIGRATION &
INTEGRATION 77 (2003). Recall that, in the scenario in which the immigrant grandparent is expected to care for the
grandchildren and immigrates with authorization, the sponsoring parents must necessarily be U.S. citizens. Lawful
permanent residents may sponsor for immigration only their spouses and unmarried children, INA Sec. 203(a)(2), 8
USC Sec. 1153(a)(2), and do not have access to the favored, uncapped “immediate relative” category, INA Sec.
201(b)(2)(A)(i), 8 USC Sec. 1151(b)(2)(A)(i).
99
Yoon, supra n.98, at 80. As we have seen, there are varying estimates of the percentage of children nationwide
who are in the care of grandparents, and the percentage of grandparents providing such care. People almost
certainly give different meanings to being the “primary” caregiver, and the concept itself may not be meaningful in a
multigenerational immigrant family.
100
Yoon, supra n.98, at 83-88.
24
sits up and says, see, I told you that today’s immigrants are lower quality than the immigrants of
a generation ago.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Abuela is “unskilled” only because society
does not value the skill of taking care of small children. She has earnings of zero because
nobody pays her for this important skill. But, because Abuela is here, her daughter can earn
more for the family. And Abuela is in no sense “taking a job from an American.” She performs
classic complementary labor, except that hers is uncompensated.
4. Is child care by grandparents and other family members good for children and society?
We have tried to put a human face on three categories of family unification that have
frequently been targeted for elimination: parents, siblings, and adult children of U.S. citizens.
There can be no doubt that elimination of such visas would force hard-pressed working families
to scramble for child care, and lead parents to reduce their working time, or devote more
resources to child care.101 But would it be a good thing, on balance, to deny US families a visa
for Abuela, if it increased immigrant participation in formal child care programs? Perhaps it is
enough to say that our society has made no such value choice. Nor am I aware of any data
showing any harm to children from being raised by relatives. All over the globe, involvement by
grandmothers and other female relatives is correlated with higher survival and better outcomes
for children.102 Examination of two studies of immigrant child rearing suggests that care by
grandmothers, aunts, and big sisters may instead be highly functional, in ways scholars are only
beginning to understand.
101
Indeed, eliminating such visas would also sharply reduce the availability of paid child care. Delia Furtado and
Heinrich Hock, using Census data comparing metropolitan areas, demonstrate the close relationship among:
percentage of immigrants in the workforce from five sending countries in which low-education immigrants
predominate; cost of paid child care; and labor force participation by college-educated women with at least one
small child. Low Skilled Immigration and Work-Fertility Tradeoffs among High-Skilled US Natives, 100
AM.ECON.REV. PAPERS & PROCEEDINGS 224 (2010). To the surprise of no one to whom I have spoken, the
relationship is a strong one. Metropolitan areas, with lots of immigrants without higher education, are areas where
child care is available and college-educated women thus work after giving birth. (The five sending countries from
which relatively low-skill labor predominates, so were used as a proxy for low-skill labor, were the Dominican
Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Mexico, and Portugal.) The relationship becomes even stronger in metropolitan areas in
which men earn high wages. The authors interpret this as high men’s earnings’ permitting their wives to drop out of
the workforce long enough to have children, but nevertheless hiring paid child care. Accord: Patricia Cortés & José
Tessada, Low-Skilled Immigration and the Labor Supply of Highly-Skilled Women, 3 AM.ECON.J:APPLIED ECON. 88
(2011); Lidia Farré, Libertad González, & Francesc Ortega, Immigration, Family Responsibilities and the Labor
Supply of Skilled Native Women, 11 B.E. J.ECON.ANAL.& POL’Y 1 (2011)(Spanish data). Obviously, understanding
the economics of this relationship cannot be done simply by examining the earnings of the immigrant nanny. One
must also consider the economic contribution now made by the female college graduate who can return to her
career. That is the economic significance of complementary labor: its benefits may inure to someone other than the
worker who performs it, and that individual may show the larger increase in earning .
102
Rebecca Sear & David Coall, How Much Does Family Matter? Cooperative Breeding and the Demographic
Transition, 37 POPULATION & DEVEL. REV. 81 (2011). Immigrant groups bring this experience with them.
25
Consider, for example, the urban working poor households studied by Katherine S.
Newman, each with members working in the fast food industry.103 She well describes the
somewhat chaotic family life of an extended immigrant family from the Dominican Republic.104
At the beginning of the book, a teenager from this family had dropped out of school, left work, is
married to a man who makes little, and in a difficult pregnancy. “Fortunately, Carmen was
literally surrounded by her father’s kin, organized into four or five related households, all living
on adjacent floors of the same building in Washington Heights. She did not have to worry about
starving, and when her phone was cut off…she could use her aunt’s phone (as did all the other
members of the family.)”105 And, at the end of the book, this is the only family to be poised on
the edge of economic security. One aunt in Michigan calls to say that the factory where her
husband works is hiring; some of her sisters join her; in their absence grandparents and older
siblings care for the younger grandchildren.106
Consider also the so-called “Latino paradox”: Latin immigrants are much healthier than
their incomes would suggest. An example is the potentially puzzling finding that rates of asthma
among Latino immigrants in Chicago are sharply lower if they live in a community numerically
dominated by Latino immigrants. The puzzle disappears when one remembers the crucial role of
unpaid intrafamily or intracommunity care. Care of asthma requires family members to take the
child outside; support the patient; share health information. Such unpaid intrafamily care may be
the key to the entire “Latino paradox.”107
.
B. Working in family businesses: network economics; family investment model; complementary
labor
103
NO SHAME IN MY GAME: THE WORKING POOR IN THE INNER CITY (1999).
“The sign on the door of Grandma’s apartment reads (in Spanish), ‘Child care available here. Person with
experience.’ A thousand children seem to be in the living room already, but that is only because they are running
around at such high speed that their numbers multiply before your very eyes. None of the kids are paying
customers; all are cousins, children of Carmen’s many aunts and uncles who immigrated after the grandmother they
have in common established herself in Inwood. They congregate at Grandma’s place because their mothers are out
to work or to doctor’s appointments and because Grandma has that rare luxury, cable TV.” Newman, supra n.103,
at 14-15. “Since the day Carmen arrived at the age of fourteen, she has hardly had a moment to herself….Eight
adults and twelve children live together in the three apartments that connect through the fire doors.” Id. 15. Another
dozen relatives live in the same building or next door.
105
Newman, supra n.103, at 302.
106
Newman, supra n.103, at 302. This important study is a gentle corrective to Barbara Ehrenreich’s wonderful
NICKEL AND DIMED: ON NOT GETTING BY IN AMERICA (2001), a book I have assigned for its brilliant analysis of the
impossibility of economic survival as a house cleaner or salesperson at Wal-Mart. Ehrenreich shows that a single
woman cannot survive economically in these jobs. Newman shows that only members of a family can, if they share,
not only child care, but information about jobs and other expenses.
107
Kathleen A. Cagney et al, The Latino Paradox in a Neighborhood Context: The Case of Asthma and Respiratory
Illnesses, 97 AM. J. PUB. HEALTH 919 (2007).
104
26
Immigrants sponsored by family members are particularly likely to work in family
businesses. They may or may not have reported income (unlike the unpaid child care worker).
However, their reported individual earnings will undervalue their economic contribution, which
will show up instead in the income of the business.108
Immigrants are particularly likely to found businesses, mostly small—twice as likely as
similar native-born.109 This ability to found businesses depends on a supply of relatives. Family
members support business formation by providing labor; pooling financial resources; pooling
living arrangements; intrafamily loans; highly-productive labor despite low wages; “family labor
can be trusted to handle sensitive transactions in which the risk of opportunism and malfeasance
is high.”110 While English-language proficiency is normally positive for immigrant business
formation, its advantage disappears for immigrants whose compatriots are geographically
concentrated: that is, immigrants who are not proficient in English may have the option of
founding a business to serve the community whose language they speak.111 While a
comprehensive picture of family business is not possible, ethnographies illustrate some of the
ways that immigrant businesses benefit from visas for parents, siblings, and adult children.
Computer distribution in Los Angeles is completely dominated by family businesses of
Chinese from Taiwan. New immigrants are integrated into the family business despite the fact
that none had any contacts with computer distribution in Taiwan. 112 Koreans are similar in their
ability to integrate adult siblings into business networks. Pyong Gap Min describes a Korean
who immigrated in 1970 under employer sponsorship, worked for a jewelry company for three
years, then started his own beauty supply store. After he naturalized, he and his wife sponsored
all their siblings, seven in total, who arrived between 1978 and 1987. All seven newcomers were
trained by their siblings to run beauty supply stores, extended loans by the first to arrive, and all
seven established beauty supply stores within six months of arrival.113
Stories of this kind could be multiplied. What do they prove? The firmest point, but the
narrowest, is, again, the critique of conventional accounting of whether immigrants are
succeeding or failing. The conventional measure, earned income in the year after arrival, is
108
Wives working in the family business may well not be paid. Philipps, supra n.82. They may not even consider
themselves principals of the business. “[M]any Korean immigrant women who worked for their family stores did not
officially report themselves [to the Census] as self-employed business owners.” Pyong Gap Min, ETHNIC
SOLIDARITY FOR ECONOMIC SURVIVAL: KOREAN GREENGROCERS IN NEW YORK City 31 (2008).
109
Vivek Wadhwa, AnnaLee Saxenian, & F. Daniel Siciliano, Then and Now: America’s New Immigrant
Entrepreneurs, Part VII 2(Kauffman Foundation October 2012)(engineering and technology companies: 24.3
percent have an immigrant owner, but this figure has dropped from 25.3 percent in 2007); Fiscal Policy Institute,
Immigrant Small Business Owners: A Significant and Growing Part of the Economy (June 2012)(18 percent of small
business owners in the US are immigrants, exceeding the immigrant share of the population (13 percent) or labor
force (16 percent). Immigrant ownership is particularly high in hospitality, where 43 percent of hotel and motel
owners and 37 percent of restaurant owners are immigrants).
110
Jimy M. Sanders & Victor Nee, Immigrant self-employment: The Family as Social Capital and the Value of
Human Capital, 61 AM.SOCIOLOG.REV. 231, 233 (1996).
111
Maude Toussaint-Comeau, Do ethnic enclaves and networks promote immigrant self-employment?, FEDERAL
RESERVE BANK OF CHICAGO ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES (4Q/2008) at 30, 43.
112
Yu Zhou, Inter-firm Linkages, Ethnic Networks, and Territorial Agglomeration: Chinese Computer Firms in Los
Angeles, 75 PAPERS IN REGIONAL SCI. 265 (1996).
113
Min, supra n.105, at 35.
27
plainly too narrow for a sector statistically prone to found new businesses that, like all new
businesses, may struggle in the early years. Immigrants probably take out little in the way of
salary—for example, wives may not be paid at all—in order to build the business. So our
accounting for immigrant success may need adjusting.
For the larger question of immigration policy, however, the story may be ambiguous.
There may not seem to be all that much policy difference between the Canadian professional
immigrant who arrives without family or networks and thus drives a taxi in Vancouver, and the
US counterpart who, by dint of family connections, opens a beauty supply store in the Bronx.
Small businesses loom large in the national imaginary but one might question how important
they should be in a development or immigration strategy, outside of high technology.114 While
the many technology companies founded by immigrants from Asia have captured the
imagination, I have never heard of one that was founded by an immigrant who arrived in the US
as an adult on a family unification visa.115 Occasionally a technology company or its founder
thereafter sponsors the founder’s family members for immigration, but this is rare.116 One
cannot, in other words, argue that family unification visas contribute much to the founding or
maintenance of technology companies. So is it a good deal for the US to admit parents and
siblings of US citizens on the assumption that many will work in family businesses?
Comprehensive examination of immigrant small business as a justification for family
unification visas lies well beyond available data and certainly beyond the scope of this paper.
We are just beginning to understand the role of the immigrant-founded small business beyond
the first generation. My Rutgers colleague Jamie Lew has studied Asian young people who drop
out of high school in New York. The US economy is generally cruel to high-school dropouts. 117
Nevertheless, “Most of the Korean American high school dropouts worked in menial service jobs
in the ethnic economy—working mostly for other Korean entrepreneurs as manicurists, cashiers,
valet parking attendants, nightclub bouncers, and the like. With their ties to ethnic enclaves and
immigrant networks, these jobs were relatively easy to secure.”118 I do not think we understand
all the ways the economy benefits by giving visas to siblings and adult children who start such
nail salons and restaurants, and we should probably think very hard before altering that
system.119
114
Marianne Bertrand & Antoinette Schoar, The Role of Family in Family Firms, 20 J.ECON.PERSP. 73 (2006)
(skeptical that family businesses are particularly outstanding economic performers).
115
Most founders came to the U.S. on student visas. Vivek Wadhwa, Ben A. Rissing, AnnaLee Saxenian & Gary
Gereffi, Education, Entrepreneurship and Immigration: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part II (June
2007) at 8. A smaller group immigrated as refugees (such as Andy Grove of Intel) or as children with their parents
(such as Jerry Yang of Yahoo or Pierre Omidyar of eBay).
116
The founders of Trend Micro Devices, a Silicon Valley manufacturer of antivirus products, sponsored the
immigration of relatives from Taiwan to staff the company. Bernard P. Wong, THE CHINESE IN SILICON VALLEY:
GLOBALIZATION, SOCIAL NETWORKS, AND ETHNIC IDENTITY 46, 90 (2006).
117
Newman, supra n.103 [other cites on increasing wage differential for education].
118
Jamie Lew, Asian American Youth in Poverty: Benefits and Limitations of Ethnic Networks in Postsecondary and
Labor Force Options, 15 J. EDUC.FOR STUDENTS PLACED AT RISK 127, 138 (2010). Obviously it is best not to have
to rely on an ethnic network, but, if one leaves school before graduating, it is much better to be in a network of
immigrant small businesses than to be outside one.
119
David Martin, at a presentation of an earlier version of this paper, noted the irony that Republican proposals to
trim family visas are usually accompanied by proposals to create temporary visas for relatively unskilled jobs. It
surely makes no sense, he observed, to create new temporary visas for jobs that could be filled by relatives of US
citizens and lawful permanent residents.
28
C. Women working dead-end jobs while men build their careers or businesses: family investment
model
A final family investment model was first described by Baker and Benjamin. Using
Canadian data, they observed the following pattern. Immigrant women participated in the paid
labor force at higher rates than native women, often in jobs offering little future growth, such as
child care. Immigrant men, as in the U.S., start businesses at higher rates than similar native
men. Baker and Benjamin described this as a kind of family investment model in which both
wives and husbands seek to maximize household income. Wives support men while men invest
in the future, perhaps by graduate education, perhaps by building a small business, in either case
commanding low initial returns but larger potential.120 The authors show that this family
investment model (akin to the New Economics of Immigration) better explains immigrant wage
patterns than other economic models, for example neoclassical. A similar pattern has been noted
for Australia.121 Like any family investment model, the economic contribution of the BakerBenjamin model is underestimated when immigrant economic contribution (or “immigrant
quality”) in evaluated by examining only earned income in the year of arrival.
Francine Blau and associates have shown that the Baker-Benjamin family investment
model is not consistent with the overall picture of immigration to the US. It is true that
immigrant women have high labor force participation, and, as we have seen, that immigrants
disproportionately found businesses. However, for several reasons, it does not seem the best
interepretation of the data generally, to understand women’s labor force participation as a family
investment model. Women’s labor force participation seems to respond to opportunities. It is
not very different from men’s labor force participation. Women and men immigrating to the US
both invest in their own human capital. Women’s labor force participation increases with
assimilation to the US; it is not a temporary measure while husbands invest in education or
businesses.122
Michael Baker & Dwayne Benjamin, The Role of the Family in Immigrants’ Labor-Market Activity: An
Evaluation of Alternative Explanations, 87 AM.ECON.REV. 705 (1997). An earlier family investment model is J.E.
Long, The Effect of Americanization on Earnings: Some Evidence for Women, 88 J.POLIT.ECON. 620 (1980).
George J. Borjas & Stephen G. Bronars, Immigration and the family, 9 J.LAB.ECON. 123 (1991) also assumes a
family investment model in explaining why married immigrants make more money than single immigrants, though
Borjas’s more recent work, as we have seen, does not, supra n.26.
120
121
Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Marie D. Connolly, A Family Affair: The Labor Market Experience of Immigrant
Spouses, 82 SOC. SCI. Q. 796 (2001)(Australian data: immigrants admitted for skills make more on entry but
differences with family visas dissipate over time, largely because of greater labor by immigrant spouses).
122
Francine D. Blau, Lawrence M. Kahn, Joan Y. Moriarity, & Andre Portela Souza, The Role of the Family in
Immigrants’ Labor-Market Activity: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations: Comment, 93 AM.ECON.REV. 429
(2003); see also Francine D. Blau, Lawrence M. Kahn, & Kerry L. Papps, Gender, Source Country Characteristics,
and Labor Market Assimilation Among Immigrants, 93 REV. ECON.STAT. 43 (2011). The reasons for the different
29
But if the Baker-Benjamin family investment model is not the best overall model of labor
force participation by women immigrants to the US, the pattern that it describes is certainly part
of the mix. It is not difficult to find examples of women in non-career jobs while men are in
graduate school or building a business.123 Further research might disclose specific subgroups of
the US immigrant population that display the Baker-Benjamin family investment model.124
CONCLUSION
Of course the US benefits economically when its doors are open to those who promise
unusual creativity or entrepreneurial success. As mentioned, the first priority in increasing such
skilled migration should award permanent residence, not just nonimmigrant work visas, to those
who come to the US for postdoctoral work.125 The US could also experiment, if it likes, with
some version of the Canadian points system for those who have accumulated degrees and
experience in their own countries, although for reasons suggested in this Article, such a points
system should include points for US experience, employer sponsorship, US family, and other
indicia of network connections in the US economy.
But neither these, nor other programs that one might imagine to encourage migration of
skilled workers, should come at the expense of existing visas for family unification. In
particular, the ability of US citizens to petition for their parents, siblings, and adult children, is
probably a very good deal for the US. Conclusions must be tentative, given the limited data that
actually compares immigrant economic performance by visa type at admission. We have
attempted to draw plausible inferences from other data sets. The picture cannot be definitive,
and more study has been suggested.
Some things are clear. If visas for parents of US citizens were eliminated or trimmed,
many working families would scramble for child care. Mothers would trim or eliminate their
work hours, whether inside or outside a family business. The bodega or greengrocer would not
be able to stay open as late, eliminating its chief comparative advantage over the supermarket.
results in Canada and the US are not clear. Blau et al speculate that there may be technical issues with cohort effects
and observations, or with comparing Canadian to US data. Another explanation offered by Blau et al is that
immigrant marriages are more fragile in the US than Canada, and thus women immigrants may respond by investing
more in their own human capital.
123
It is suggestive that adult immigrants are more likely to be enrolled in school, and at older ages, than natives.
Harriett Orcutt Duleep & Mark C. Regets, Immigrants and Human-Capital Investment, 89 AM ECON REV PAPERS &
PROCEEDINGS186 (1999).
124
The ten groups with the highest rate of small business ownership are Greece (16 percent of the Greek-born labor
force are small business owners), what the Census terms “Israel/Palestine” (13 percent), Syria (12 percent), Iran (12
percent), Lebanon (11 percent), Jordan (11 percent), Italy (10 percent), Korea (10 percent), South Africa (9 percent),
and Ireland (8 percent). After the top 10, the next three countries on the list are Iraq, Pakistan, and Turkey. Fiscal
Policy Institute, supra n.109, at 15. Obviously these are mostly countries with relatively small numbers of
immigrants in recent years.
125
Hunt, supra n.5.
30
It is harder to form a complete economic picture of immigrant siblings of US citizens.
However, we know that these aunts are a statistically significant source of child care in Latina
families. Indeed, under a family investment model, it may be rational for the most recentlyarrived aunt to watch all the children while her sisters, better networked and more proficient in
English, are in the paid labor force. We also know that siblings are particularly likely to work in
family businesses.
Overall, then, it appears that the US is well-served by family unification. Our search for
the skilled and talented should not blind us to the crucial kind of economic growth that comes
when children are well cared-for and educated; their health needs observed and attended; when
family businesses employ family members and obviate their demand for social services; when
family members pool earned income while one builds a small business. This kind of economic
growth can be observed, with our eyes of course, but in diffuse statistics on the new economics
of migration; complementary labor; employment in networks; and the economics of unpaid work
and care. Economic statistics that don’t observe this economy will underestimate the economic
value to the US of its policies on family unification. We should hesitate before changing policies
that have served us so well.
31