The Linkage between Immigration and Internal Migration in Large Metropolitan Areas in the United States

This paper investigates the relationship between the internal migration of native-born workers and flows of immigrants to the United States using the 1980 and 1990 U.S. Census Bureau microsamples. A growing body of research asserts that places like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami suffer net losses of native-born workers, particularly the unskilled, because of immigration. We contend that large metropolitan areas suffer net losses of internal migrants for reasons other than the flow of immigrants to these localities. Based on the estimation of three sets of regression models for five overlapping samples of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States and five mutually exclusive segments of the labor force, this analysis shows that the finding of a significant linkage between internal migration and immigration depends critically on the empirical experiment used. In direct opposition to previous published research, we conclude that net migration of the native born for metropolitan areas is either positively related or unrelated to immigration. Our models show that the net migration loss of unskilled native workers from metropolitan areas is probably a function of those cities’ population size rather than immigrant flow to them. We conclude that the net migration loss of native-born workers from large metropolitan areas is more likely the result of industrial restructuring than of competition with immigrants.