IMMIGRATION POLICY AND THE AGRICULTURAL LABOR MARKET: THE EFFECT ON JOB DURATION

IMMIGRATION POLICY AND THE AGRICULTURAL LABOR MARKET:
THE EFFECT ON JOB DURATION*

Introduction

The effects of immigration policy change on the agricultural labor market have received
much attention both economically and politically. The most important immigration policy change
in recent years for the agricultural labor market was the Immigration Reform and Control Act
(IRCA) of 1986. IRCA granted amnesty to a substantial number of undocumented agricultural
workers, entitling them to work legally in the United States. Just before the passage of IRCA,
many farmers and legislators expressed concern about its possible effect on the agricultural labor
market. Their prediction was that undocumented agricultural workers who received amnesty
would leave agriculture for other employment opportunities, which would lead to serious labor
shortages and wage increases in agriculture.¹

Limited empirical work has been done on the relationship between legal status and farm
work duration (Hashida and Perloff 1996, Tran and Perloff 2002, and Emerson and
Napasintuwong 2002). Generally, these studies conclude that estimated durations for
documented, in contrast to undocumented, workers are significantly longer. Among these, the
most comprehensive study is Tran and Perloff (2002). Using the National Agricultural Workers
Survey (NAWS) data for the years 1987-91, Tran and Perloff estimate a stationary, first-order
Markov model of employment turnover, and calculate the steady-state probability for each
demographic group to work in agriculture. They conclude that “Predictions made when the 1986

^* The authors are grateful to Susan Gabbard, Trish Hernandez, Alberto Sandoval and their associates at Aguirre
International for assistance with the NAWS data, and to Daniel Carroll at the U.S. Department of Labor for granting
access and authorization to use the NAWS data. This research has been supported through a partnership agreement
with the Risk Management Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture; by the Center for International Business
Education and Research at the University of Florida; and by the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station. The authors
alone are responsible for any views expressed in the paper.

¹ See Tran and Perloff (427-28) for a detailed discussion of industry and legislative concerns.

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