Essays on the heterogeneity of immigrant groups in the United states: Testable implications using human capital theory

This dissertation focuses on many facets of assimilation and economic well being of immigrants in the United States. In the first chapter, I analyze how the implicit difference in time horizons between refugees and economic immigrants affects subsequent human capital investments and wage assimilation. The analysis uses the 1980/1990 Integrated Public Use Samples of the Census to study labor market outcomes of immigrants who arrived in the US from 1975 to 1980. I find that in 1980, refugee immigrants in this cohort earned 6 percent less and worked 14 percent fewer hours than economic immigrants. Both had about the same level of English skills. The two immigrant groups had made substantial gains by 1990; however, refugees had made greater gains. In fact, the labor market outcomes of refugee immigrants surpassed that of economic immigrants. In 1990, refugees from the 1975--1980 arrival cohort earned 20 percent more, worked 4 percent more hours, and improved their English skills by 11 percent relative to economic immigrants. The higher rates of human capital accumulation for refugee immigrants contribute to these findings.;In the second chapter of this dissertation, I analyze the relationship between age at arrival and immigrant receiving high schools (i.e., enclave schools) on the academic performance of immigrant children using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) 1992--1993 and the Common Core of Data (CCD) 1992--1993. The CILS was conducted in two major immigrant-receiving cities in the United States---San Diego and Miami. I find that the test score gap between US-born and first generation immigrant children decreases the longer immigrant children reside in the US. Overall, the findings in this paper suggest that immigrant children in enclave schools perform as well as immigrant children that attend non-enclave schools.;The last chapter of this dissertation, I analyze the most recent increase in the minimum wage rate in the US, primarily focusing on a group of workers that should benefit the most---immigrants. In particular this paper makes the distinction between immigrants and natives who work in low and high immigrant industry concentration. This paper also investigates whether there is any relationship between industry noncompliance and the concentration of immigrant workers. I find that both immigrants and natives benefited from this recent increase in the minimum wage rate. Also, the two procedures testing non-compliance towards immigrants unambiguously show no existing evidence of such incidence. In fact, female immigrants in high immigrant industry concentration, who are the worst off in the sample compared with the other groups, are the group with the highest compliance towards them.