Access to education and location decisions of undocumneted migrants in the United States

Many states have experienced a large influx of undocumented migrants in recent years. This has  created new demands on the educational systems at the state level.  Some states have passed legislation to restrict the access of undocumented immigrants to higher education while others provide access in various forms including in-state tuition. These policy changes are a part of the contentious and contested debates across the nation regarding the burdens and benefits of illegal immigration and the need for comprehensive immigration reform.  Seventeen states currently allow in-state tuition for undocumented students.  Fourteen states, namely California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington have passed state legislations covering in-state tuition rates to undocumented students, and two states, Oklahoma and Rhode Island, do so through Board of Regents decisions. Our research examines the impact of educational access on the location decisions of undocumented migrants in the US. Previous research has identified greater economic opportunities as important determinant of the percentage of undocumented migrants at the state level. Our analysis of educational opportunities expand the role of economic opportunities by introducing an inter-generational component namely education and future income potential of the next generation, the children of illegal immigrants.  We use data from the PEW survey on the percentage of  undocumented immigrants as a part of the total population at the state level as our dependant variable.  The explanatory variables include measures of  economic opportunities, size of immigrant network and quality of life and educational policies. Undocumented immigrants appear to locate in states with policies that foster greater individual freedoms. There is also evidence of clustering of undocumented migrants in states with large migrant networks.  The effect of educational access on the percentage of undocumented workers in a state is small in most specifications, indicating perhaps a trade-off between competing priorities in their choice of location.