This article estimates the unauthorized U.S. labor force and explores employers’ initial reactions to the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). A sample of businesses, undertaken to evaluate IRCA impact, supplies information on hiring practices. A selectivity correction model is used to impute 2.6 million unauthorized workers in the entire sample which compares favorably with other estimates. The estimate is tabulated by questions about IRCA: the findings suggest that a large proportion of the unauthorized labor force uses fraudulent documents, many without the knowledge of their employer. This may be associated with the apparent lack of marked change in patterns of unauthorized hiring in the period immediately following IRCA passage.
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