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Abstract
This research note examines response and allocation rates for legal status questions
asked in publicly available U.S. surveys to address worries that the legal status
of immigrants cannot be reliably measured. Contrary to such notions, we find that
immigrants' response rates to questions about legal status are typically not higher
than response rates to other immigration-related questions, such as country of birth
and year of immigration. Further exploration of two particular surveys - the Los Angeles
Family and Neighborhood Survey (LAFANS) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation
(SIPP) - reveals that these data sources produce profiles of the unauthorized immigrant
population that compare favorably to independently estimated profiles. We also find
in the case of the SIPP that the introduction of legal status questions does not appear
to have an appreciable "chilling effect" on the subsequent survey participation of
unauthorized immigrant respondents. Based on the results, we conclude that future
data collection efforts should include questions about legal status in order to (a)
improve models of immigrant incorporation and (b) better position assimilation research
to inform policy discussions.