Economics
Immigration Quotas of 1920s Failed to Aid U.S.-Born Workers’ Pay
- Transatlantic research team says paper holds lessons for today
- Farmers invested in equipment upon loss of immigrant workers
A migrant family dockside at Ellis Island, New York, in the mid 1920’s.
Photographer: Bettmann/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
The closing of American borders to mass migration from Europe in the 1920s, one of the biggest immigration policy changes in the country’s history, didn’t raise wages for U.S.-born workers in the areas most affected by the shift, according to a transatlantic team of researchers who say the history offers important lessons for today.
Quotas effectively limiting annual immigration by more than 75% targeted Europe yet exempted Mexico and Canada, encouraging labor flows from those countries to American cities and new capital investment in rural areas, the researchers said in a working paper distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research.