g., Briggs 1975; Fogel 1980; Johnson 1980). Those in favor of a light but steady immigration process are so because even though it affects the wages in Houston it also affects the product cost. Also argued in favor of a light policy against illegal immigration workers is that skilled immigrants invest savings and add entrepreneurial talent to the Houston economy, while unskilled immigrants accept jobs unwanted by resident workers, (i.e. picking fruit, domestic housework, landscaping labor). Immigrant impact on wages and employment opportunities of resident workers appears minimal (Borjas 1990), such impacts may be mitigated by the migration system. This can be shown when immigrant labor substitutes for local Houston labor, Houstonians may move as wages fall or grow too slowly and job vacancies can be filled by illegals. Out-migration offsets to a certain point the downward pressure on wages exerted by the immigrants, thereby dampening the observable wage impact at the immigrant destination. .
Wages have consistently been shown to be lower for unauthorized workers than for legal workers in the United States (see North and Houston 1976 or Borjas and Tienda 1993). Wage differences could be due to differentials in observed productivity-related .
characteristics, differences in economic returns to those characteristics, or differences in unobserved characteristics related to the selection of unauthorized and legal immigrants. Legal status can have a direct impact on wages because of explicit employer discrimination (see Portes and Bach 1985). Even though they are not directly exempt from U.S. labor laws, unauthorized workers are less likely to know or exercise their rights in the face of employer exploitation. However, employer exploitation is not required for wage differentials to arise. Illegal immigrants tend to stay concentrated in some specific low-paying jobs that have become identified as traditional migrant or illegal workers" jobs (Cornelius 1976; Gill and Long 1989; Taylor 1992).