The validity of the primary source of data on the occupations of immigrants to the United States (Immigration and Naturalization Service reports) has been severely criticized. In fact, the “substantive meaningfulness” of results based on this data has been questioned. In this article we empirically investigate the nomological validity of these occupational data using a time series analysis. We find, at least on an aggregate level, that the results provide fairly strong support for the validity of these data as a measure of the distribution of those in blue-collar and white-collar occupations for the major regions from which people immigrate to the United States.
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