Economic progress and international mobility of human resources: Chinese immigrants in the United States labor market

In the past several decades, the United States has experienced major shifts in the source of immigration due to the amendment of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965. The shifts in the countries of origin raise concerns as to their effects on the U.S. labor market and welfare system. These concerns rekindle interest in questions such as how immigrants are selected from their original populations and what skills they bring with them.This thesis investigates Chinese immigrants in the United States. The purposes are twofold. First, most researchers have usually treated Chinese immigrants in the United States as a homogeneous group regardless of their country of origin--mainland China, Taiwan or Hong Kong. Because of different levels of economic development and different kinds of political systems in the three areas, the Chinese immigrants are likely to be at differing quality levels, and to experience different assimilation rates. The first part of this thesis examines differences in the quality and assimilation of Chinese immigrants in relation to their points of origin.Second, this thesis investigates how Taiwanese immigrants in the United States are selected from Taiwan's population to examine the observed (skills or levels of education) and unobserved (motivation or ability) characteristics of Taiwanese immigrants and non-emigrants. Previous researchers provide less insight regarding differences between emigrants and non-emigrants in the context of their countries of origin. The thesis takes a direct approach to compare Taiwanese immigrants and non-emigrants in Taiwan.The results indicate great differences among Chinese immigrants from the three areas in age, wage rates, years of schooling and industrial and occupational distributions. Immigrants from China tend to be older and less educated (less skilled) than immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan. In addition, the thesis finds that the three Chinese immigrant groups experienced substantial assimilation into the U.S. labor market during the 1980s.When Taiwanese emigrants and Taiwanese non-emigrants are compared, there is positive selection on unobserved and observed characteristics for both emigrants and non-emigrants. Taiwanese emigrants in the United States are more skilled and educated than non-emigrants because the wage distribution in Taiwan is more compressed than that in the United states and because a more egalitarian wage distribution rewards lower-income (lower-skill) people relative more and encourages higher-income (higher-skill) people to emigrate.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio