Estimating the emigration rates of legal immigrants using administrative and survey data: the 1971 cohort of immigrants to the United States

Abstract

Based on administrative and survey data as well as data-based assumptions about the bounds on alien address reporting, this study provides estimates of the lower and upper bounds for the cumulative net emigration rates, by country and area of origin, of the FY1971 cohort of legal immigrants to the United States as of January 1979. The merged data indicate that the cumulative net emigration rate for the entire cohort could have been as high as 50 percent. Canadian emigration was probably between 51 and 55 percent. Emigration rates for legal immigrants from Central America, the Caribbean (excluding Cuba), and South America were at least as high as 50 percent, and could have been as high as 70 percent. Emigration rates for Koreans and Chinese could not have exceeded 22 percent over the same period.