Shirking Hard or Hardly Shirking: Personal Finances and US Immigration Policy

• In Event: The Political Economy of Migration and Finance

Abstract

Do politicians support immigration if it is likely to benefit them personally? By linking members of Congress' assets to groups that different economic theories of migration posit will benefit from immigration, I am able to predict if a legislator stands to gain (or lose) economically from immigration. I compare this to how their constituencies stand to be impacted, giving us a potential insight into the rise of nativist populism in the US.

I test four theories of how immigration might affect factors of production or firms. A Stolper-Samuelson framework predicts that members of Congress who own a lot of capital stand to gain the most from immigration, while constituencies that are more dependent on labor stand to lose. A Richardo-Viner model claims that politicians will gain more the more capital they have, while constituencies will benefit except to the extent that local labor markets attract immigrant labor. A model based on New New Trade Theory suggests politicians who own small firms will benefit from more immigration as will constituencies that have more small firms, with the opposite holding for large firms. Finally, a model that allows for offshoring predicts that politicians owning firms and industries that produce products not easily traded will gain, while constituencies with a lot of labor in these same firms and industries will be hurt.

Leveraging firm-level data, my analysis of over 150 Congressional votes on immigration from 2004 to 2014 provides evidence that politicians are more likely to support immigration when they stand to personally gain.

Author

• Caleb Ziolkowski, UCLA