Interior immigration enforcement policy and the subjective well-being of US residents: evidence from secure communities

• Published in: Applied economics letters Vol. 26; no. 18; pp. 1516 - 1523
• Main Author: Gunadi, Christian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Routledge 24.10.2019; Taylor & Francis LLC
• Subjects: Black people; Community; Economic analysis; Economic theory; Economics; Enforcement; Hispanic people; Immigration; Immigration policy; Latin American cultural groups; Life satisfaction; subjective well-being; Well being; United States > US
• ISSN: 1350-4851; 1466-4291
• DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2019.1584358

There were increased efforts to enhance interior enforcement of immigration laws in the United States in recent years. Considering that more interior immigration enforcement measures are going to be proposed in the near future, there is a need to evaluate whether such policy can achieve its objective and imparts some benefits to the population it is supposed to help. In this article, I examine the impact of one of the largest interior immigration enforcement effort - Secure Communities - on the subjective well-being of US residents. The analyses show that there is no evidence that Secure Communities statistically significantly increased the proportion of white or black non-Hispanics reporting that they were satisfied with their life. Evaluated at the mean, at 10% significance level, the results suggest that I can rule out an effect size larger than 0.5% and 1% for white and black non-Hispanics, respectively. Since only a small share of white or black non-Hispanics are foreign-born, this finding suggests that the benefit of Secure Communities to US-born individuals that are coming through an increase in their life satisfaction is not economically large.