abstract: 'An estimated 7.8 million people live and work in the United States

  without authorized status. We examined the extent to which legal status

  makes them vulnerable to employment discrimination despite technically

  being protected under labor laws. We used three decades of data from the

  nationally representative National Agricultural Workers Survey, which

  provides four categories of self-reported legal status. We first

  investigated how legal status affected the wages and income of Mexican

  immigrant farmworkers using linear regression analyses. Then, we used

  Blinder-Oaxaca models to decompose the wage and income gap across the

  1989 to 2016 period, categorized into five eras. Unauthorized

  farmworkers earned significantly lower wages and income compared to

  those with citizen status, though the gap narrowed over time.

  Approximately 57\% of the wage gap across the entire period was

  unexplained by compositional characteristics. While the

  unauthorized/citizen wage gap narrowed across eras, the unexplained

  proportion increased substantially-from approximately 52\% to 93\%. That

  the unexplained proportion expanded during eras with increased

  immigration enforcement and greater migrant selectivity supports claims

  that unauthorized status functions as a defining social position. This

  evidence points to the need for immigration reform that better supports

  fair labor practices for immigrants.'
affiliation: 'Scott, J (Corresponding Author), Louisiana State Univ, Sch Social Work,
  2167 Pleast Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803 USA.

  Scott, Jennifer, Louisiana State Univ, Sch Social Work, 2167 Pleast Hall, Baton
  Rouge, LA 70803 USA.

  Hale, Joanna Mhairi, Univ St Andrews, Sch Geog \& Sustainable Dev, St Andrews, Fife,
  Scotland.

  Padilla, Yolanda C., Univ Texas Austin, Steve Hicks Sch Social Work, Child Welf,
  Austin, TX 78712 USA.'
author: Scott, Jennifer and Hale, Joanna Mhairi and Padilla, Yolanda C.
author-email: 'jenscott@lsu.edu

  Jo.Hale@st-andrews.ac.uk

  ypadilla@utexas.edu'
author_list:
- family: Scott
  given: Jennifer
- family: Hale
  given: Joanna Mhairi
- family: Padilla
  given: Yolanda C.
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1007/s11113-021-09652-9
earlyaccessdate: APR 2021
eissn: 1573-7829
files: []
issn: 0167-5923
journal: POPULATION RESEARCH AND POLICY REVIEW
keywords: 'Immigration status; Wage discrimination; Latinos; Farmworkers;

  Undocumented; Inequality'
keywords-plus: 'UNITED-STATES; LABOR-MARKET; LEGAL STATUS; CONTROL ACT; WORKERS;

  EARNINGS; REFORM; MIGRATION; MIGRANTS; MOBILITY'
language: English
month: OCT
number: '5'
number-of-cited-references: '69'
orcid-numbers: Hale, Jo Mhairi/0000-0003-1343-3879
pages: 861-893
papis_id: 7e80a680e6323c7375fd3c8bb398a9d4
ref: Scott2021immigrationstatus
times-cited: '3'
title: 'Immigration Status and Farmwork: Understanding the Wage and Income Gap Across
  US Policy and Economic Eras, 1989-2016'
type: article
unique-id: WOS:000636155400001
usage-count-last-180-days: '0'
usage-count-since-2013: '8'
volume: '40'
web-of-science-categories: Demography
year: '2021'