Immigration and its impact on the wage gap in the United States

Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of SociologyThe aim of this thesis is to examine the effect that immigrants have on the wagegap in the United States. Immigrants have been defined in this research as individuals who have been born outside the United States whereas non-immigrants are individuals who are born in the United States and thus have automatic citizenship. The conceptual model has been divided into three component parts consisting of the Individual segment, the Structural segment and the Discrimination/Disadvantaged Groups segment. Various literatures on the subject of immigrants and the wages they earn argue that there is devaluation and sorting that takes place. Data for this thesis has been obtained from the 2008 Current Population Survey (CPS). An univariate and bivariate analysis was performed which showed that, among other variables, immigrants are more likely to be younger and have fewer years of education than non-immigrants. Data from this analysis also showed that immigrants are more likely to have at least a High School diploma. An Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Regression analysis was also performed for this thesis. The resultant data shows that immigrants indeed earn fewer wages than non-immigrants. In addition, the data shows that the Individual model segment has a greater effect on the immigrants groups than it does for the non-immigrants