Just so you know
Someone somewhere asked me about my own professional research, rather than the annoying crap I post here. Welp here it is;
Mexicans who wind up back in Mexico after being in US - whether through their own choice or cause they got their asses deported - earn 20% more than the Mexicans who've never been to US.
20% more. That's like the equivalent of going to college, without actually having gone to college, by just putting your little foot over the imaginary crystal frontier . This is evidence for two possible hypothesis:
1. Self-selection - it takes a lot of freakin' guts to migrate to US, there's a lot of physical hardship, not to mention the emotional costs of being separated from one's family etc. and as a result only those who think they can *make it* come here. And these are the exactly the kind of people you'd want. As that old SNL skit said:
"you got a strong back? we could use you!" (as an aside, if it's true that Mexican immigrants primarily lower the wages of the lowest skilled native workers, how come the lowest skilled native workers aren't complaining? Mostly I just see some middle class movie critics and upper class Harvard professors who have a problem with it. And folks who worry about brown people having too many children. FOP.)
2. There are human-capital-accumulation possibilities available in US that are simply not there in Mexico. The ex-migrants come back to Mexico with a lot more skills than they have left.
This is one of those things that empirically it's gonna be really hard to tell apart. Another interesting aspect of all this is that the wage premium (us wages vs. mexican wages) IS NOT the highest for the poorest parts of Mexico. An immigrant from Chiapas or Oaxaca gets a big bonus compared to what they were making back home, but once you control for education and skill level, an immigrant from Mexico City actually gets, in percentage terms, way way more.
Bottom line = American institutions + Mexican work ethic - Lazy Americans "natives" who've been here for generations = fuck you China, Europe, come over here, let me slap your around a bit. We'll own this world for a few more centuries. Because WE DON'T get crazy about immigration. We're an idea (a wonderful, wonderful idea), not a people. Franks or whatever. And you people that have been here for generations, you're getting lazy, getting spoiled, if you don't look out you'll wind up like'em Europeans over there.
Here you go, we immigrants upraciate this much more than you spoiled monkeys:
All American!
Mexicans who wind up back in Mexico after being in US - whether through their own choice or cause they got their asses deported - earn 20% more than the Mexicans who've never been to US.
20% more. That's like the equivalent of going to college, without actually having gone to college, by just putting your little foot over the imaginary crystal frontier . This is evidence for two possible hypothesis:
1. Self-selection - it takes a lot of freakin' guts to migrate to US, there's a lot of physical hardship, not to mention the emotional costs of being separated from one's family etc. and as a result only those who think they can *make it* come here. And these are the exactly the kind of people you'd want. As that old SNL skit said:
"you got a strong back? we could use you!" (as an aside, if it's true that Mexican immigrants primarily lower the wages of the lowest skilled native workers, how come the lowest skilled native workers aren't complaining? Mostly I just see some middle class movie critics and upper class Harvard professors who have a problem with it. And folks who worry about brown people having too many children. FOP.)
2. There are human-capital-accumulation possibilities available in US that are simply not there in Mexico. The ex-migrants come back to Mexico with a lot more skills than they have left.
This is one of those things that empirically it's gonna be really hard to tell apart. Another interesting aspect of all this is that the wage premium (us wages vs. mexican wages) IS NOT the highest for the poorest parts of Mexico. An immigrant from Chiapas or Oaxaca gets a big bonus compared to what they were making back home, but once you control for education and skill level, an immigrant from Mexico City actually gets, in percentage terms, way way more.
Bottom line = American institutions + Mexican work ethic - Lazy Americans "natives" who've been here for generations = fuck you China, Europe, come over here, let me slap your around a bit. We'll own this world for a few more centuries. Because WE DON'T get crazy about immigration. We're an idea (a wonderful, wonderful idea), not a people. Franks or whatever. And you people that have been here for generations, you're getting lazy, getting spoiled, if you don't look out you'll wind up like'em Europeans over there.
Here you go, we immigrants upraciate this much more than you spoiled monkeys:
All American!
posted by YouNotSneaky! at 9:12 PM
8 Comments:
Nice post! Original facts to add. No one has written this post before. Hope somebody else links to it...
Karl
Thanks karl.
What would a good natural experiment be for this?
Maybe see what's the premium for second generation immigrants going back to Mexico? (If there are any?)
Is there a similar "premium" for workers from India or elsewhere on returning to their country of origin?
I can think of one simple skill that could easily account for a 20% wage increase: the ability to speak fluent english.
Being able to speak fluent english is one of the PRIMARY distinctions between the uber-wealthy 1% and everyone else. Well, that and being in a click with the rest of the 1% uber-wealthy.
Perhaps it would be interesting to do some research by skill type.
Gabriel - yeah I've been trying to think of way one could identify this. I think basti below's idea could get you at it somewhat - if we could compare English speaking ex-migrants with English speaking non-ex-migrants then we could maybe figure out how much of the premium is do to English speaking ability.
Jake, I haven't look at the data for other countries, but my understanding is that it's available. That's sort of in the "potential future projects" pile.
You raise an interesting point. However, I wonder whether the wage differential is not related to the place to which they relocate here in Mexico.
In my opinion, Mexicans who migrate tend to leave really poor parts of the country and, when they come back, they normally do not return to work to the place from which they originally migrated. It could be the case that Mexicans that migrate from the same poor regions to bigger cities within Mexico also experience similar wage increases.
Jose
Jose, it's one of the things that I'm looking at - trying to control for these sorts of things. But I'm not so sure that the people who migrate - at least in the data - are leaving the poorest areas of Mexico. To the extent that there something to that it may be a fairly recent phenomenon.
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