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Abstract

At the start of 2008, in Arizona, undocumented workers were faced with a complicated decision of whether or not to emigrate out of the state or to stay and face harsher labor laws. The Legal Arizona Workers Act was put in effect on January 1, 2008. This law made it necessary for all employers to verify their worker’s authorization status using E-Verify. As a result, there was a significant amount of emigration out of Arizona by unauthorized workers. Similar to the self-selection process narrowed down by Chiquiar and Hanson (2002), the sets of decisions made by this leaver group can be made clearer by studying where they moved. Building on Liou and Halliday (2015), this paper continues to focus on populations of Mexican-born workers living in the southwest in order to model an estimated movement of the leaver group. Ultimately, the model estimates that Texas and New Mexico are the states most likely to have had spillovers. Colorado and Nevada were the least likely to see spillovers. These results are in line with what is known about the movements of undocumented workers in current research; that workers leaving Arizona as a result of LAWA were focused on a move towards the state with, the highest share of their occupation, coupled with the least risk, and the highest population of undocumented immigrants.

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