The Postpandemic U.S. Immigration Surge: New Facts and Inflationary Implications

The U.S. experienced an extraordinary postpandemic surge in unauthorized immigration. This paper combines administrative data on border encounters and immigration court records with household survey data to document two new facts about these immigrants: They tend to be hand-to-mouth consumers and lo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Policy File 2024
Main Authors: Cheremukhin, Anton, Hur, Sewon, Mau, Ronald, Mertens, Karel, Richter, Alexander W, Zhou, Xiaoqing
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
Immigration
Inflation
Noncitizens
Pandemics
Online Access:Request full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The U.S. experienced an extraordinary postpandemic surge in unauthorized immigration. This paper combines administrative data on border encounters and immigration court records with household survey data to document two new facts about these immigrants: They tend to be hand-to-mouth consumers and low-skilled workers that complement the existing workforce. We build these features into a model with capital, household heterogeneity and population growth to study the inflationary effects of this episode. Contrary to the popular view, we find little effect on inflation, as the increase in supply was largely offset by an increase in demand.