Latino Employment and Non-Latino Homicide in Rural Areas: The Implications of US Immigration Policy

From 1990 to 2000, rural counties experienced a major influx of low-skill Latinos. This was due in part to the increased enforcement of the U.S.-Mexican border, which encouraged Latino migrants already in the United States to stay for fear that they cannot return. We examine whether the increasing dominance of Latinos in rural low-skill labor markets raised rural homicide among non-Latino whites and blacks. Using 1990 and 2000 census and crime data for counties, we find that where low-skill labor markets shifted toward Latino labor, violence increases among non-Latino whites, but not among blacks. This is in contrast to prior research emphasizing how low-skill jobs loss is detrimental mainly to blacks. This major structural change in the ethnic structure of low-skill employment has negative consequences for rural white communities, and current theorizing on the loss of low-skill jobs must account for these effects.