Social determinants of immigrant selection on earnings and educational attainments in the United States, Canada and Australia, 1980--1990

The increasing number and changing ethnic composition of immigrants in the past few decades led to the debates on "declining skills of immigrants". This dissertation investigates the impacts of macro- and meso-level socioeconomic factors on the selection of immigrant skills. The economic literature using the self-selection theory suggests that immigrants' group-level skills are a function of international gap in wealth and internal inequality, but many sociological studies find important roles of geo-historical and social characteristics of ethnic groups in migration decisions, skill transfer, and adaptation to the host societies. The major hypotheses are based on migrant networks, social capital, world-systems, and structural imbalancing theories.; Using census samples of the U.S., Canada and Australia taken in the 1980s and 1990s, statistical analyses were performed at three levels: international, national and subnational. At each level and for each entry cohort, earnings and education differentials between immigrants and comparable natives are calculated by regressing individual earnings and education attainment on individual level explanatory variables. Then group level immigrant-native differentials were regressed on political, economic, and social factors. The analyses also correct for the selection bias caused by the nonrandom selection of migrants from origin-country population.; The analyses revealed that internal inequalities are generally reliable predictors of immigrant earnings but not of educational attainments. Migrant networks contribute to the decline of immigrant skills, but some types of ethnic groups---e.g. professional, newer and resourceful groups---have social capital that improves selection and adaptation of immigrants. The structural imbalancing measured by the return to education improves immigrant skills by inducing brain-drain emigration. It was also found that the disadvantages of Asian and Latin American immigrants are much greater in the U.S. than in Canada or Australia. Therefore, social factors, rather than mere economic factors, are the significant determinants of immigrant skills. Policies to screen immigrants based on observed skills alone will not be successful unless these social factors, particularly the lack of racial integration in the U.S., are taken seriously in designing integrated immigration and naturalization policies.