The determinants of immigration from Mexico to the United States: a state-to-state analysis

Abstract

The determinants of undocumented immigration flows from Mexican states to US states utilizing data recently released by the Mexican Consulate are analysed. The results generally support that immigrants tend towards states with higher Mexican immigrant populations, shorter distances, higher wages and smaller populations.

Keywords:

• immigration
• Mexico
• the United States

JEL Classification:

• F2
• J1

Notes

¹ Many individuals living in locations in the United States that border Mexico commute between the two countries, sometimes daily. Many legal immigrants in this situation choose to purchase the card issued by the Mexican Consulate as a cheaper solution. Anecdotally, we know this to be the case for many but definitely not all Mexican immigrants living on the border. However, we have no data to determine the prevalence of this practice among border immigrants.

² For Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS), we use ivreg2 command in STATA constructed by Baum et al. (2010).