Immigrant blacks have largely been ignored, both in discussions about
racial discrimination and about the assimilation of immigrants. In analyzing
immigrant blacks, Sowell (1978) claims to have evidence that it is not
discrimination that is responsible for the poor labor market success of native
blacks, but rather their "cultural traditions." Using the 1980 Census, I find
that while immigrant blacks are more likely to be employed, their wages are not
different conditional on employment. To the extent that there are differences,
further investigation reveals that it is the selection processes associated with
migration, and not cultural traditions which account for the differences between
natives and immigrants. Finally, I find that black immigrants do not have similar
"assimilation" patterns to white immigrants, and there is evidence that there has
been a recent decline in the quality of the immigrant cohorts.

More immigrants entered the United States during the l980s than
in any comparable period since the 1920s. Although at a national
level the inflow rates were relatively modest, most of the newly
arriving immigrants settled in only a handful of cities. In this
paper, we study the effects of immigration during the 1980s on the
evolution of wages within a sample of 24 major cities. We
concentrate on changes in wages for relatively low-paid workers,
and on changes in the gap between highly-paid and low-paid
workers. Our analysis reveals significant differences across
cities in the relative growth rates of wages for low-paid and
highly-paid workers. However, the relative growth rates of wages
at the low end of the earnings distribution bear little or no
relation to the relative size of immigrant inflows to different
cities.

Some argue that a high union wage premium and the industrial council system are important causes
of inflexibility in the South African labor market. We estimate union premia on the order of 20 percent for
African workers and 10 percent for White workers. We also find that African nonunion workers who are
covered by industrial council agreements receive a premium of 6-10 percent; the premium is positive but not
statistically significant for Whites. In addition, although the union gap is smaller inside of the industrial
council system than outside of the system for Africans, the total union premium for union members covered
by an industrial council agreement is similar to the union premium outside of the industrial council system.
Among Africans, the industrial council and union wage gaps are largest among low wage workers.