Do Not Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor! Determinants of Legislator Voting on Immigration Issues

This paper examines the determinants of the U.S. House of Representatives 1996 vote on the "The Immigration in the National Interest Act." Public choice theory suggests that the voting behavior of legislators is affected by the interests of their constituencies, special interest politics, and by their ideology. The paper uses probit analysis to test the significance of the above factors. The results suggest that Representatives responded to the socioeconomic interests of their constituents as expected. However, in a surprising finding, pro-business legislators appear to have voted to restrict immigration.