Abstract
Wage differences between authorized and unauthorized Mexican immigrants can be explained by human capital factors prior to the 1986 passage of employer sanctions, which prohibited knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens. However, a significant post-1986 wage differential has been interpreted as employers “passing along” expected costs of sanctions through lower wages for unauthorized immigrants. I test this explanation using administrative data on employer sanctions enforcement, finding employer sanctions enforcement levels are related to Mexican immigrants’ wages but have no statistically significant differential effect based on legal status. Estimated savings to employers due to the pay gap are orders of magnitude larger than actual fines.
- © 2017 Russell Sage Foundation. Brownell, Peter. 2017. “Employer Sanctions and the Wages of Mexican Immigrants.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 3(4): 70–96. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2017.3.4.05. Direct correspondence to: Peter Brownell at peter{at}peterbrownell.net, Center on Policy Initiatives, 3727 Camino del Rio South, #100, San Diego, CA 91208.
Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.