Hispanic Migrants Face Hostile Conditions.

Recent immigrants to the U.S. from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic — who are more likely than Mexicans to enter with legal documents, more education, and better English competency — “are no better off in terms of wages and, in fact, are more likely than their Mexican counterparts to be working in the informal sector and receiving their wages in cash,” reveals a new study by a Rice sociologist. These hostile working conditions, like those of Mexican migrants, are linked to America’s immigration policies for the last 19 years.

Since passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986, researchers have observed employment conditions worsening for Mexican immigrants. Many are working more hours for significantly fewer wages and often as part of the “underground economy” or the informal sector. A recent study by a Rice sociologist shows newer immigrants from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic facing the same hostile labor conditions in the U.S. despite their preferential legal status, more formal schooling and better English competency.

“Given differences in their legal status and in aspects of their skills and experience, one would expect Nicaraguans to have a better experience in the U.S. job market than their Mexican counterparts,” says Katharine Donato, an associate professor of sociology at Rice University and co-author of a study on immigration policy and employment conditions of U.S. immigrants from Mexico, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.

“Instead, we discovered that Nicaraguans and immigrants from the Dominican Republic are no better off in terms of wages and, in fact, are more likely than their Mexican counterparts to be working in the informal sector and receiving their wages in cash.”

Donato’s study is the first to document that today’s labor market conditions for Nicaraguan and Dominican immigrants are the same or worse than Mexican migrants have experienced since Congress passed the IRCA in 1986 — this country’s first law designed to reduce undocumented migration to the U.S.

“Our study shows that the deleterious consequences of restrictive policies within the last 19 years persist and in some respects are worse for other Latino immigrant groups today,” Donato says.

To assess whether there have been differences between the employment conditions of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. and those of other Latino groups, Donato and her colleagues reviewed employment conditions for all Latino migrants prior to and following 1986 when the Immigration Reform and Control Act was enacted. The researchers examined the impact of recent policies on migrant wages and asked if the policy effects for Mexicans occurred for other Latino groups as well.

In their analysis, they were careful to control for factors that might explain differences in migrants’ wages, such as a person’s age when they immigrated, how well they spoke English, whether they belonged to a U.S. social club or had parents and siblings with prior U.S. experience. Immigrants’ legal status after 1986 was also expected to have an impact on whether they worked in the informal sector and received wages in cash.

“For most of the 20 th century migrants without documentation who were caught in this country, whether at work or home, were deported. The penalty was the immigrant’s to bear,” Donato explains.

Since passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 and even stricter legislation in 1996, the onus regarding immigrant workers’ status has begun to shift to employers. Besides penalizing employers, border enforcement has increased, immigrants have been barred from social programs, and a telephone verification system has been established so that employers can verify a potential employee’s legal status.

“These dramatic changes in the immigration landscape since 1986 could mean that now there are discriminatory hiring practices that perhaps didn’t occur before,” says Donato, who cites a study by the U.S. General Accounting Office in which approximately one-fifth of employers surveyed in 1990 reported discriminatory treatment on the basis of Hispanic origin after 1986.

For their analysis, Donato and her colleagues relied on data from the Latin American Migration Project and the Mexican Migration Project, which provided them with comparable information across national origins. Random surveys were conducted in 3,730 households in Mexico, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, along with non-random surveys of outmigrants located in the U.S. in 1999 and 2000.

Donato and her colleagues believe their findings raise critically important questions for future research on the effects of America’s immigration policies, particularly with regard to other immigrants from Latin America or Asia and Africa.

Donato and her co-authors, Chizuko Wakabayashi from Rice and Michael Aguilera at the University of Oregon, initially presented their findings at the Latin American Migration Project Conference in Costa Rica. Donato and a Rice economist also brought leading migration scholars from around the country and the University of Guadalajara to Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy to discuss patterns and trends in undocumented migration between Mexico and the U.S.

A member of Rice’s sociology faculty since 2000, Donato has written about a number of issues related to Mexican immigration to the U.S., including the ways in which social networks affect the health of Mexican families, the consequences of Mexican immigration for new U.S. destination areas, and the social process of undocumented border crossing.

Donato’s research has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including Social Forces, International Migration Review, International Migration, Population Research and Policy Review and Social Science Quarterly.

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, where she received her first master’s degree, Donato earned a second master’s and her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in demography at the University of Chicago.

To learn more about this research, contact Donato at km*@**ce.edu or B.J. Almond in the Office of News and Media Relations at ba*****@**ce.edu .