Anywhere they go, we go: Immigration inflow's impact on co‐ethnic natives in the U.S

Using data from the 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 Censuses and the American Community Survey five‐year sample for 2006–2010, we examine the impacts of immigration inflows on the migration patterns of co‐ethnic natives in the United States. We explore whether the outcomes are driven by changes in labor market returns in the receiving cities or sociocultural benefits of being surrounded by co‐ethnics. We find that a higher ethnicity‐specific immigrant population share within a city increases the population share of both co‐ethnic natives who remain in the receiving cities and co‐ethnic natives who migrate into these cities, relative to natives of other ancestries. All baseline results survive robustness and falsification tests, and instrumental variable estimations. Through the heterogeneous effects, we find that the sociocultural benefits, such as language and ethnic goods that immigrants bring to receiving cities, are the potential channels that attract co‐ethnic natives to migrate towards those enclaves.