INTEGRATION OF MULTIPLE DATA SOURCES IN IMMIGRANT STUDIES Teresa A. Sullivan and Marta Tienda CDE Working Paper 84-18INTEGRATION OF MULTIPLE DATA SOURCES IN IMMIGRANT STUDIES Teresa A. Sullivan University of Texas at Austin Marta Tienda University of Wisconsin-Madison This paper was prepared for presentation at the 1984 Annual Meetings of the Population Association of America, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Institutional support was provided by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences of the University of Wisconsin and the Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin. April 1984 (To appear in Review of Public Data Use)Abstract ‘This paper describes and classifies the types of data now available in the “system” of U.S. immigration statistics and illustrates through a selective teview of recent studies how these sources can be combined into discrete investigations of immigration, First we outline an heuristic framework for classifying and discussing 1mmigration statistics. This framework distinguishes between the production and use of official and unofficial statistics. The remaining discussion addresses the diversity of studies employing unofficial data sources, and selectively highlights points of convergence in substantive findings, policy inferences and the strengths and limitations of varying research approaches.INTEGRATION OF MULTIPLE DATA SOURCES IN IMMIGRANT STUDIES The rapidly growing literature about the dimensions, causes and consequences of immigration to the United States is impressive, not only for its volume, but also for its diversity in substantive concerns, theoretical orientations, research approaches and types of evidence presented. The latter two aspects of this diversity--data sources and methodological approaches-~are the central concerns of this paper. Rather than an attempt at yet another comprehensive literature review that sorts the vast number of immigration literature by data sources and methods, this paper has two objectives: first, to describe and classify the types of data now available in the “system” of U.S. immigration statistics; and second, to illustrate how these sources can be combined into discrete investigations of immigration. This paper, then, might be called a metastudy of immigration. Readers should be forewarned that the idea of building a master file which links a variety of data sets through matching of selected identifiers and/or characteristics of respondents or places is not contemplated. Rather, our goal is to identify data gaps in existing statistical and non-statistical data sources so that future data collection efforts might benefit, and so that future analysts might pursue multi data and multi-method strategies to validate specific substantive conclusions.The "System" of Immigration Statistics The word statistics shares an etymological origin with the word statistics were originally the data produced by and for the state. When the Nineteenth Century preoccupation with national boundaries led to the inspection of persons crossing those borders, the data we now call immigration statistics came into existence. By today, a variety of data have been analyzed to draw conclusions about immigration; the sources are by no means limited to data authorized or collected by the state. The very proliferation of data sources, collected under differing auspices, complicates the analysis of immigration statistics. These varying data sources and the mechanisms for collecting the data may be described, for our purposes, as the immigration statistics “system.” As we will show, however, in many respects this “system” is quite unsystematic. A system of statistics may be analyzed in terms of their characteristic production and subsequent use. Within the U.S. system, it is also helpful to distinguish the “official” statistics from the “unofficial” statistics. These two dimensions~-function and auspices--may be combined to produce Figure 1, which is offered as an heuristic device for classifying and discussing immigration statistics. (Figure 1 About Here) Data production may be conceptually separated from data analysis, although the design of the data constrains the possible analyses. Data production refers to the collection, compilation, coding and storage of basic data concerning immigration, Data production is intentional, but the intentions of the producer and those of the analyst do not necessarily coincide. Some data collected by INS, especially those collected in response to Congressionalmandate, are produced specifically for analysis. Other data, often called by-product data, have analytic uses beyond their intended purposes. For example, INS data on budgeting and personnel are produced to aid the administration of the agencys nevertheless, in the hands of the analyst they may provide important information about enforcement or shifting ports of entry among immigrants. The absence of some useful data (such as preference category upon entry), the loss of data, or data incompatibility are among current data production problems in immigration studies. Data analysis refers to tabulating, comparing, modelling, or in other ways manipulating data to draw substantive conclusions about immigration. Primary analysis carries out the intentions for which the data were produced. Secondary analysis uses data ostensibly collected for another purpose. Administrative by-product data are nearly always subjected to secondary analysis, but in addition secondary analysis of purposive data collection is common (for example, secondary analyses of the U.S. Census or the Current Population Survey). Immigration data may be further classified by the auspices under which they were collected. Official data are collected by a government agency. “Unofficial” data includes those produced by not-for-profit or private sector firms. There are two intermediate cases as well. The first is the use of government funds to finance the collection of data by non-government investigators. The General Social Survey, which has sometimes been used to compare immigrants with the native-born, is one such data set. However, because government grant programs usually disclaim responsibility for these data sets, the data are perhaps best considered to be “unofficial.” A second intermediate case is that of data collected by a foreign government or by a quasi-governmental agency, such as the United Nations High Commission forRefugees. These data, while official in some contexts, are unofficial as used within the United States. The two cross-cutting dimensions of production/analysis and offictal/unofficial auspices provide four analytic categories for understanding the studies of immigration that have been done and the gaps remaining. Cell A, production of official statistics, is notable for its decentralization. Within the federal government a number of agencies produce data on immigrants or refugees, either intentionally or as a by-product of their other services. The information system is a federal one, with the states providing at least some information on vital events occurring to immigrants, refugee program use, bilingual education, and other topics that vary by state. The decentralized nature of this production system leads to many of the frustrations of analysts. Because of the decentralized nature of the system, data are not always comparable from one agency to another, nor even from one time period to another. Census data permit one to identify the foreign-born, but INS data distinguish among categorizing aliens. Some critical data, such as the decennial census, are collected infrequently, while other data are available on an annual, quarterly, or monthly basis. Further, because of the relative rareness of immigrants and their great heterogeneity, many official data sets that are representative of the population yield small case bases of immigrants. These frustrations have encouraged the development and use of unofficial statistics. Cell B of the figure, the production of unoffical statistics, fits loosely if at all into the official ” ystem.” Included in this category are intensive ethnographic studies of immigrants and immigrant sending and receiving communities; local surveys and compilations of local data; reconstructions ofhistorical series from extant but unsystematized data; and many other possibilities. Added to this unofficial aspect of the “system” are the data of foreign consulates and embassies, foreign government agencies, and international agencies, all of which are “official” in another context. Even with all the supplementary unoffical data that are produced, however, existing data sets may remain inadequate in terms of the coverage, validity, and reliability of the data they contain, or they may be inadequate because they are impossible to compare or to splice with other extant official or unofficial data. To some extent, analysts have tried to solve these problems with more creative uses of the existing data. Our discussion focuses on the diversity of studies employing unofficial data sources, and selectively highlights points of convergence in substantive findings, policy inferences and the strengths and limitations of varying research approaches. Cell C of the figure is the analysis of data from unoffictal sources. This may be primary analysis, but because of the probibitive expense of collecting unofficial data, secondary analysis is more common. The agenda for unofficial analysis is set by current intellectual issues, policy debates, theoretical developments in one or more of the social sciences, or simply the curiosity of the investigator. Such studies, usually published in the scholarly journals, monographic literature, ot popular press, may not be cumulative because their audiences are specialized along political, class, or disciplinary lines. To the layperson or the policy-naker, the resulting debates and controversies, especially those centering on issues of data adequacy, may seem partisan or merely arcane. Just as diverse motivations underlie the collection of data by unofficial sources, so too the analysis of data by unofficial analysts responds to many goals. A lack of consensus among, the analysts may be a sign of healthy diversity ané not merely offactionalism. On the other hand, an effort such as this one to integrate findings from different data sources is limited to the major substantive foci of recent research. The fourth cell of Figure 1, Cell D, is the analysis of official data. Primary analyses may be guided by official or quasi-official agendas for the types of statistical tests desired and the frequency with which they are to be done. The U.S. Gensus Bureau is an example of @ statistical agency that not only produces data, but also publishes analyses of these data, many at regular intervals, others as occasional papers. Comparisons of official data sources may occasionally be undertaken to provide statistical benchmarks. But analyses of immigration data under official auspices have been relatively rare. The intellectual division of labor has allocated this task to individual researchers in the private sector. Although the greatest volume of recent social science research about immigration has been based on census-type surveys (especially the 1960 and 1970 Public Use Samples and the 1976 Survey of Income and Education), reliance on such data greatly restricts the range of substantive issues that can be addressed and the kinds of analytical approaches that can be pursued. Given the restricted range of social and economic variables available on census files, and the virtual absence of cultural indicators, it is not surprising that most immigration studies that rely on census data focus on the socioeconomic characteristics of the foreign-born population. The latter usually differentiated by national origin and occasionally by year of arrival cohorts. Census micro-data encourage the use of individuals or households as units of analysis, but the use of places or some other aggregate unit can portray macro dimensions of sociél phenomena. Multi-level analyses combining person and place variables are less common, but not entirely absent from the literature.Because of the extensive reliance of previous researchers on official data, a discussion of how these data have been analyzed in the past and/or how to link census data with various administrative and non-administrative data would entail an entire paper. In the interest of adhering to the focus on unofficial data sources, we limit our discussion to unofficial survey data and to ethnographic data. A Closer Look at Unofficial Data Sources An important distinction must be made between statistical data (e.g. social surveys) and non-statistical data sources (e.g. ethnographic and archival or historical data). This section outlines the relative strengths of each type of data. The potential complementarity among various types of unofficial data sources requires some discussion of the analytical approaches that have been employed to address specific substantive questions. Understanding this complementarity is one key in integrating multiple data sources. Studies based on both ethnographic and survey data have generated useful Ansights about immigration as a social phenomenon, although the relative strengths, limitations, and types of inferences based on both kinds of data clearly differ. Both survey and ethnographic data sources can be tailored to specific substantive questions about immigration as a social process whose causes and consequences extend from individuals to sending and receiving communities, but the scope, depth and generalizability of the information differs considerably. In the main, this results from the qualitative nature of ethnographic data compared to the quantitative nature of survey data as well as the manner of soliciting and “coding” information. Ethnographic databenefit from greater respondent flexibility, whereas survey data often compromise the richness of open-ended responses to facilitate coding. Ethnographic Data Ethnographic data are, by definition, qualitative and richly textured information, and their main strengths reside in their depth and comprehensive coverage of an immigrant conmunity or a specific aspect of the inmigration process. Ethnographic data tell us a great deal more about social processes and interaction patterns that structure immigration flows than conventional survey data, but the comprehensiveness of information produced depends on the amount of time spent in the field and the number of field sites. Ethnographic data are generally not portable among different research enalysts, therefore they are not easily subjected to secondary analyses or verification except through restudy by different investigators. However, the practice of ethnographers to solicit information from multipie sources--participant observation, key informants, and respondent interviews--serves as an internal data consistency check and as a form of response validation. In sun, the major drawbacks of ethnographic information are, the nonportability of information among researchers, the limited generalizability of the results beyond the population or locality of study, and the difficulty of subjecting the data to rigorous hypothesis testing using aultivariate statistical techniques. The major advantages afforded by ethnographic data are the depth-perception they provide about the dimensions of human interaction that structure geographic movements and ultimately the social and economic characteristics of immigrants which are efficiently portrayed, but often misinterpreted by survey data analysts.Survey Data The strengths of unofficial survey data complement the weaknesses of ethnographic data and vice versa. Primary strengths of unofficial survey data reside in their pliability for defining the number and scope of topics covered by an instrument, the definition of the universe, their degree of statistical representativeness, and their anenability to rigorous empirical analysis. None of these features are absolutes, for there are implied trade-offs in scope, representativeness, breadth, population coverage and quantifiability that are determined by cost and time considerations. Moreover, many aspects of immigration are difficult to capture using conventional random sampling survey techniques. The obvious example is the phenomenon of illegal immigration, which defies the use of random sampling techniques. Non-random sampling methods, including incidental or snowball samples, have been employed with varying degrees of success, but the process of statistical inference is seriously impaired. Other concerns not easily pursued with survey data (or ethnographic data) are the macro-structural properties of the immigration process, including the changing nature, direction, and composition of the flows, but the official data sources are especially well suited to address such matters. Despite the many virtues of survey data for addressing questions about immigration, these unofficial data sets present several drawbacks. Most surveys are one-time a static snapshot of social and economic outcomes that provide relatively limited information about how various outcomes occurred. Causal relationships are imposed by the analyst through statistical inference and substantive interpretation. Thus, mst cross-sectional surveys of immigrants are limited in their ability to eddress questions about process, or to establish causal relationships clearly.10 Notable exceptions are those few surveys that contain retrospective modules about the timing of various events over individual life cycles, inclu¢ing migration, employment, and fertility histories. The dating of changes in social and demographic statuses permits greater precision in estimating causal models, but inevitably the date of the interview introduces censoring and truncation biases. Gurak's (1980) recent survey of Dominican and Colombian immigrants in New York City, and Massey's (1981) study of four Mexican “sending communities” are excellent recent examples of the uses of retrospective modules in cross-sectional surveys of immigrants. Because both surveys have been undertaken within the last two years, no specific findings illustrating the use of retrospective life history modules for the study of immigration as a social process have been released. ‘Two recent examples are papers by Mullan (1984) and Kritz and Gurak (1984) which are based on these surveys. An alternative to the use of retrospective modules in sample surveys for incorporating a temporal dimension in cross-sectional surveys involves re-interviewing a sample of respondents at several points in time. This approach 1s preferable to that of repeated cross-sections for making direct inferences about causal sequences leading to specific outcomes. However, cost factors have greatly inhibited individual researchers from undertaking truely longitudinal surveys of immigrants. Moreover, attempting a longitudinal survey of immigrants, a population which by definition has a high propensity to move, increases the extent of sample attrition and this, in turn, can impair the representativeness of the sample, assuming it was random in the firet place. Complexity and cost factors aside, it is noteworthy that currently there does not exist a nationally representative longitudinal study of recent immigrants. In most longitudinal studies of the general populationuw the number of immigrants included in the sample is too small to permit separate analysis, especially if separate analyses of nationality groups are contemplated. One of the most well-known recent longitudinal surveys of immigrants was conducted by Alejandro Portes (1972) between 1973 and 1979. His universe was defined by an incidental sample of legal Cuban and Mexican immigrants who entered the United States in 1973 at specified ports, and who were re-interviewed in 1976 and 1979, Although this universe is less than optimum from the standpoint of statistical randomness and representativeness of the total population of Cuban and Mexican immigrants, the longitudinal dimension of Portes's survey has allowed novel analytical approaches and insights about immigrant incorporation experiences. Moreover, early panels informed subsequent ones, so that by the third panel Portes solicited more information about the structural contexts in which specific individual outcomes occurred. As a result, the last wave of data permitted more extensive multi-level data analysis than the earlier waves. Obviously, the strategy used to define a universe and devise a sampling scheme may limit the usefulness of the survey for studying immigrants. (For example, the General Social Surveys include only the English-speaking population over age 18 in their universe), Leaving aside the special problem of sampling the undocumented immigrant population, there are no obvious guidelines about how to conduct a sample of immigrants to study the determinants of migration and the consequences of immigration for the sending and receiving communities. With few exceptions, most primary sample surveys about immigrants have defined the universe on the basis of those who actually move across international boundaries and settle in a specific locality (locality defined universes) or who cross at a specific time (time-defined universes), or both.12 Such strategies for delimiting a universe are appropriate for addressing questions about the experiences of immigrants in a host society, but these samples easily limit analysts' interpretations of the causes and consequences of international migration in at least two ways that bear importantly on policy issues. First, by excluding those who decide not to emigrate, studies based on samples of individuals who have migrated across international boundaries distort our understanding of the determinants of immigration and lead to potentially erroneous conclusions about the nature of migrant selectivity. Second, time and locality defined universes, especially the latter, ignore the fact that an unknown number of immigrants may have returned to their place of origin, or moved on to another destination. This latter problem can be partly resolved by inquiring about past migration history, intended moves, and the existence of friends and relatives in other localities, but it introduces selection problems of unknown magnitude in the statistical analysis of the survey date, and may ultimately distort conclusions about what mix of individual, familial, and iccational features combine to structure aggregate flows. Depending on the craftiness of the analysts and the universe used for a sampling frame, which can range from national to local, survey data can be manipulated to create hierarchical files representing different structural contexts (based on characteristics of the workplace, the neighborhood, the labor market, etc.), but such multi-level research approaches, although promising, have only recently begun to emerge. Nevertheless, the insights generated by such approaches have implications for the undertaking of further data collection. To summarize, the main advantages of survey data reside in their generalizability, the scope of topics covered, their amenability to rigorous13 hypothesis testing, and the high degree of portability among researchers. In practice, however, the access to and distribution of specialized surveys about immigrants is not extensive, as there is no central clearinghouse which receives and distributes primary or secondary data sources containing information about immigrants to interested researchers. The generalizability, substantive content, and amenability of unofficial surveys to rigorous secondary analyses of immigration issues varies greatly as a function of the motivation for the original research. Although cross-section surveys can be designed to handle temporality of events through retrospective techniques, or through repeated cross-sectional approaches, each strategy poses different problens for the analyst, of which cost, sample attrition, and recall problems may be the most substantial from the standpoint of data production, and truncation, censoring, and selection bias are the more important from the standpoint of data analysis. Substantive Complementarities Among Unofficial Data Sources Although there are a number of possible combinations of data types, three particular combinations have led to fruitful studies of U.S. immigration. We have termed these three combinations the multi-level studies, the multi-method studies, and the multi-dataset validations. The first category uses combinations of data aggregated at different levels to establish a finding. For example, micro-data or household data might be used to enhance or specify conclusions based on aggregated data. The study of Borjas(1983) , discussed below, is one example. Such a study may be conducted entirely within one cell of Figure 1.14 The second combination, the multi-method study, combines fundamentally different types of data to bolster a finding or to provide quasi-replication. An example would be the use of ethnographic data to confirm findings of a sample survey. Such studies frequently require the combination of cells in Figure 1, particularly the combination of cells A and B or B and D. The third category, the multiple dataset category, involves the cross-validation of a finding using a different dataset that measures the same population or variable of interest. For example, U.S. estimates of immigration from a country can be compared with that country's estimated emigration to the United States. Such studies typically require combinations of cells A and B of Figure 1, although other combinations might also be pursued. Given the diversity of substantive concerns in the empirical literature, one way to manage such an illustration is to select a few research and policy issues, such as labor displacement, labor recruitment, and other reception factors encountered by recent immigrants. Both are central concerns for understanding the societal consequences of contemporary immigration patterns and the integration experiences of recent immigrants, and they represent research domains where the official data sources, including nationally representative census survey data, have been of limited value. The following section illustrates the complementarity of ethnographic and survey information for validating conclusions about specific aspects of these substantive areas. Labor Market Displacement Much of the current debate about the need for reform in the immigration legislation centers on the alleged negative labor market impacts of a large influx of foreign workers, particularly during times of economic recession.15 The major research issue at the crux of the current policy debate is whether immigrants displace native born workers in the labor market, and, by extension, whether the unemployment rates observed among domestic workers would be lower in the absence of immigration. Obviously, this assertion assumes perfect, or near perfect substitutability among native and immigrant workers, a condition that cannot be established by intuition or assertion. The counter-argument to the displacement thesis is that immigrants expand the Jabor market; a weaker form of this argument is that immigrants take those Jobs and accept wage rates domestic workers would not consider. Either way, the net aggregate impact of immigration is benign. While 4t is very likely that immigration policy decisions will continue to be made without much regard for recent research findings, it 1s important to note that our limited understanding of the articulation of native and foreign-born workers in the U.S. labor markets begins with the lack of appropriate data to study the problem of displacement and complementarity of dmmigrant and domestic labor. Nevertheless, the centrality of this issue for the policy debate has encouraged researchers to address the question using census survey data in innovative ways and conducting intensive case studies of immigrant firms. At a very general level, the basic findings of these studies tend to corroborate each other in showing that the extent of displacement between domestic and immigrant labor is very small, if it exists at all, partly because these groups of workers do not find employment in the same kinds of enterprises, and partly because of differing skill levels between native- and foreign-born workers. However this generalization requires much more specificity for us to suggest that this is an example of quasi-replication involving multiple data sets and methodologies. Further elaboration clarifies why this is the case.16 Borjas’ (1983; 1984) econometric analyses of several nationally representative census surveys show no evidence that immigrants displace native workers. fis various analyses define labor markets using SMSA boundaries and, when sample sizes permit, these are replicated within broad industry categories (e.g-, manufacturing, construction, services, etc.) to bolster his basic finding of the extent of complementarity among native and immigrant workers, Two features of his data sources and methodology are noteworthy for discussion. One is his use of a multi-level methodology using individuals as units of analysis. Borjas specifies wage functions as determined by individual, group, and industry characteristics. This methodology required merging of information from secondary sources and also appending aggregated census data on individual records. Second, the level of aggregation he used to establish the complementarity of domestic and foreign workers was rather coarse. Even 1f there is general agreement that the labor market impacts of immigrants are specific to labor markets where large volumes of foreign workers settle, the ethnographic evidence shows that even within detailed industries—-the garment industry for example—-there is substantial segregation between native and foreign workers across specific firms. The pervasiveness and extent of inter-firm segregation between native and foreign-born workers 4s consistent with results showing limited, if any, labor market displacement. However, the industry and occupational segregation of workers does not preclude the existence of competition and substitution. For this reason, more ethnographic studies, and firm-level studies in particular, are needed to pursue the question of complementarity and substitution between native and foreign workers. Moreover, some intermediate level studies which can illustrate the social processes that result in inter-firm segregation ofwv domestic and immigrant workers, and others which simulate the wage structures that could prevail in the absence of low-skill foreign-born workers would help to reconcile better the generally consistent, but specifically inconclusive inferences about the nature and extent of articulation of the domestic and foreign born workforces. Labor Recruitment Roger Waldinger's (1984) ethnographic study of the work patterns of Colombian and Dominican immigrant women residing in New York City revealed that labor recruitment in predominantly immigrant firms occurs within family, friend, and kinship networks; this information is not new. The insight his study affords is that an apparently stable ethnic labor force in small garment firms can mask extensive turnover in the job incumbents. This results as new friends and relatives assume the jobs vacated by returning migrants. To elaborate a bit further, consider the well documented fact that recent immigrants with limited skills and poor English proficiency usually find employment in the secondary sector, often in industries employing substantial numbers of other like minorities. What might one infer about labor market Ancorporation experiences of immigrants from such facts? Survey information about the ethnic composition of workplaces, as Portes obtained in his 6-year longitudinal survey of Mexican and Cuban immigrants, help document the extent of ghettoization of foreign born workers of a given national origin, but such data seldon aid in establishing ties or antagonisms among the workers themselves, nor do they comment on the operation of recruitment channels for the workers involved. It is striking to note that despite the belief that common ancestry (i.e., Mexican origin) provides a ready base for elaboration of ethnic and class solidarity, Browning and Rodriquez's (1984) ethnographic18 study of indocumentados in Austin has demonstrated why this image of the Chicano-Mexicano interface is incorrect. He has elaborated in some detail the existence and nature of antagonism between Chicano and Mexicano residents in the workplace as well as in the social and cultural spheres of life. Additional Reception Factors The questions of which and how reception factors structure the social and economic integration of recent immigrants might further help clarify processes of industry and occupational segregation, as well as help delineate the nature of tensions between domestic and foreign-born workers of common or different national origins. Besides the obvious need for ethnographic studies of social. networks among immigrants and especially the existence of recruitment strategies based on kinship ties, an intriguing line of research that could shed new light on the old questions of the manifestations and consequences of ethnic antagonism might derive from the policy sensitive and data illusive issue of illegal migration. For example, ethnographic work by Browning and Rodriquez (1984) has begun to illustrate the extent of antagonism between Mexican immigrants and Chicanos in the Austin labor market, but it is unclear whether similar patterns are found among the border towns or in agricultural areas. Another important aspect of reception factors concerns the under-studied phenomenon of immigrant enclaves. It 1s unclear whether the formation and maintenance of economic enclaves by Cubans in Miami and by Koreans in Los Angeles actually serve to shield new immigrants from the corrosive forces of a competitive labor market as Portes and his associates (Portes and Bach, 1980; Wilson and Portes, 1980), have suggested, or whether the existence of economic enclaves, while affording advantages for new entrants in the short run,19 ultimately serve to verify divisions between native and foreign-born workers and thereby mask real labor market displacement. Neither the ethnographic nor survey evidence is clear on this question, for there 1s a great deal of dispersion anong studies and sources in defining enclaves, and other forms of positive or negative reception factors, including the recruitment networks that make ethnic enclaves viable economic enterprises. This, then, suggests a major research and data gap which is critical to advance our understanding of how reception factors influence labor allocation patterns which, in turn, may ameliorate the extent of labor market displacement resulting from the continued influx of innigrant workers. Despite the appeal of undertaking multiple-source immigration studies for validating or clarifying ambiguous or unexpected findings, researchers encounter numerous obstacles in practice. Many of the obstacles to multiple-source studies are traceable directly to the tension pointe implicit within Figure 1. A brief catalogue of obstacles would include definitions of the universe, legal definitions of the terms used, conceptual variations, differential quality of coverage, and incomparabilities in time. Thus, some rather obvious studies have been impossible to do. We reconsider this point in our concluding section where we specify future data production and analysis strategies. Structural Complementarities and Tension Points of the Innigration Statistics "System The interplay of several levels of government and of both official and unofficial parties generates within the current immigration statistics system @ series of checks and balances that bears some resemblance to those underlying the design of the U.S. government. ‘here are three bases for these checks and balances: differential abilities, differences in subject matter, and differences in analytic techniques.20 The official sources are bolstered by the coercive power and scope of the atate, which can compel cooperation with the U.S. census and with the INS. Federal funding maintains high quality procedures and the continuity needed to produce time series. These advantages can be balanced against the relative freedom of the unofficial researcher to use untried or experimental procedures, and against the possibility that a non-governsental researcher can obtain better rapport and cooperation from at least some populations. The subject matter of the official data sources is limited by the centrality of the variable to the government mission. Certain subjects are not investigated by government agencies (e.g-, one’s religion) while other subjects may not be reported honestly to the government (e.g., illegal activities). Aside from regulations protecting human subjects, unofficial investigators enjoy wide latitude in the sorts of information they seek. This provides a means of balancing the official data with additional unofficial data or replacement unofficial data. With regard to methods, official data are usually comprehensive in scope and amenable to quantitative amlysis, Unofficial data, although often more restricted in scope, may have a richness and extensiveness of detail that is unavailable in official reports, as well as providing more qualitative and attitudinal information, The major disadvantage of this statistical “system” is that official and unofficial research agendas may be sufficiently different that large gaps remain in our understanding about immigration. This may occur because needed data have not been produced, or because the data are not available or accessible for analysis, Aside from these structural problems, there are also imtellectual gaps that arise through the failure to exploit the extant data adequately.21 One example will suffice to demonstrate the tension points in the current system. Demographic accounting is not an explicit function of official statistice, but the constitutional mandate to conduct the census and the subsequent Congressional requirements for demographic data of various sorte may be construed as an obligation to keep demographic accounts. In the basic demographic equation, the population at time two is a function of the population at time one plus natural increase plus net migration. This equation requires estimates of births, deaths, immigration, and emigration. Birth and death data are collected by the states; immigration data are provided by INS, and emigration estimates are made by the U.S. Census Bureau. Differences in definitions, timing, and coverage contribute to the errors in computing these variables, but the need to coordinate all these different data sources is in itself sufficient to introduce error. Many additional issues of substance and method may immediately be raised, including accounting for illegal immigration, return migration, the mortality of immigrants, and the fertility of immigrants. Each of these issues, in turn, raises a host of subissues. For example, to what extent do normal and reverse selectivity among immigrants contribute to their differential mortality? How can we adjust our mortality estimates to account for person-years of exposure to health conditions in the United States? Conclusion The present “systen” of immigration statistics is complex and decentrailzed. The nature of immigration is a complex process and the decentralization of the official agencies and individual research agendas, seem to be irreducible aspects of the system. Improvements in the system are of course possible, but the structural issues seem to be more or less22 permanent. On the other hand, the variety in the data sources offer more opportunities for analysts to compare and contrast data, verifying findings with several data sets, or combine information innovatively. Thus, while the integration of the system may be impossible, the integration of findings is quite possible,Borjas, George 1983. “The Substitutability of Black, Hispanic and White Labor”, Economic Enguiry, Vol 21 (January):93~106 1984 “The Impact of Immigrants of the Earnings of the Native-Born: Evidence from the 1970 Census.” Paper presented at the meeting of the National Council for Enployment Policy. Browning, Harley and Nestor Rodriquez 1984 "Migration of Mexican Indocumentados as a Settlement Process. Forthcoming in Borjas and Tienda (eds.), Hispanics in the U.S. Economy. New York: Academic Press. Gurak, Douglas 1980 Hispanic Immigrants in New Yor! Research Proposal funded by NIMH Work, Settlement and Adjustment. Keite, Mary M. and Douglas Gurak 1984 Kinship Networks and the Settlement Process: Dominican aud Colombian Immigrants in New York City. Paper presented at 1984 Meetings of PAA, Minneapolis. Massey, Douglas 1981 U.S. Mexican Migration: The Settlement Process. Research Proposal funded by NICHD, Mullan, Brendon 1984 Occupational Mobiliby of Mexican Migrante to the United States. Paper presented at the 1984 Meetings of PAA, Minneapolis. Portes, Alejandro 1972 Assimilation of Latin American Minorities in the U.S. Research proposal funded by the National Science Foundation Portes, Alejandro and Robert L. Bach 1980 “Inmigrant Earnings: Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the U.S. International Migration Review, 14(3):315-337, Waldinger, Roger 1984 “Immigration and Industrial Change in the New York Apparel. Industry.” Forthcoming in Borjas and Tienda (eds.), Hispanics in the U.S. Economy. New York: Academic Press. Wilson, Kenneth and Alejandro Portes 1880 “Immigrant Enclaves: An Analysis of the Labor Market Experiences on Cubans in Mian,” American Journal of Soctology, 86(2):295~319.Figure 1 HEURISTIC CLASSIFICATION OF IMMIGRATION DATA Auspices of Data Data Collection/Analysis Product ion Analysis official A D Unofficial