Immigration flows to the United States have risen and fallen in tandem with the tightening of the country’s labor market, the analysis said. Economic and Border Encounter Data By the Center for Global Development.
The study found a strong correlation between the number of job openings per unemployed person (market tightness) and the number of border crossings reported by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), leading to the conclusion that “pull factors, represented by U.S. labor market tightness, are an important determinant of the number of crossings at the southwestern U.S. border.”
This conclusion runs counter to a national political outlook that has become increasingly focused on reducing migration through aggressive policing at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I have two points to make. First, nobody talks about drivers, but look at this incredible correlation that has lasted for 25 years,” said economist Dany Bahar, who wrote the paper.
Bahar added that two million people a year are choosing to migrate to the Western Hemisphere, a record number.
“And there’s really nothing happening in this hemisphere on a scale that could explain that. So the only thing that’s gone haywire is the U.S. labor market.”
While Latin America has undergone political change since the pandemic, the region has not seen the violent transfer of power or generational economic crises that would traditionally have triggered further migration.
The report found that while some countries that are major sources of migration, such as Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti, have weathered prolonged economic crises, unemployment rates and GDP per capita in the region have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels.
“To be clear about these assertions, I am not denying the fact that push factors exist and are important determinants of current financial flows. For example, Venezuela’s political and humanitarian crisis continues and is not expected to be resolved anytime soon, especially as Nicolás Maduro is expected to remain in power after elections that will be neither free nor fair in 2024,” Bahar wrote in the paper.
“Given this, we can expect to see even more Venezuelans flee the country.”
But the report’s analysis shows long-term trends and doesn’t necessarily show associations that have formed in the wake of the pandemic.
Bahar said this correlation has held true for the past quarter century regardless of which party was in power in the US, but has become even more pronounced since the pandemic.
“Obviously, in the past few years, the first few years, the correlation is stronger, but it’s still there. This is part of what I show with the different presidents, it doesn’t matter who the president was, because I wanted to show the political party as well. So the correlation is still there for all years and it’s pretty strong, but visually, I think you really see it at least from 2018 onwards. It was striking,” Bahar said.
Before 2018, going back to 2014, there is an exceptional gap between labor market tightness and border encounters.
“I looked into it more closely because whatever he did during the Trump administration; [there were] “Overall, border crossings have gone down,” Bahar said.
“Even in those years, there’s still a positive slope between immigration and tight labor markets. See? Yes, that relationship still exists, even though everything collapsed.”
