In 2004 the Argentine government established that immigration is a human right and launched a large regularization program that benefit almost 0.5 million people, mostly from neighboring countries, or 29% of the immigrant population. Despite a substantial normative and legal literature praising the in-form content of the legislation, little empirical research assesses its real effects. This paper exploits variation in treatment intensity across several dimensions and finds mixed results.

Popular empirical strategies that examine the labor impacts of migrants, like the skill-cell approach, are frequently used to measure the effects of immigrants from a particular skill group on native-born workers with similar skills. I use an augmented version of the skill-cell approach to examine the impacts of immigrants on native workers with similar skills but also across skill groups. I apply this approach to the case of Nicaraguan immigrants in Costa Rica. I find large positive employment and wage effects on high-skilled women arising from low-skilled migrants.

The Venezuelan migration to Peru has been growing at fast speed since 2016 reaching a peak in 2018. Using a panel that allows us to control for individual effects, we study the heterogeneous short-term responses to the inflow of Venezuelan migrants in terms of employment, informality and earnings of Peruvian workers during 2008-2018.

About 1.8 of the 5.2 million Venezuelans who have left their country due to political and economic turmoil have settled in neighboring Colombia. The extent to which the Colombian schooling system can absorb the massive demand for education of Venezuelan children is key for their future trajectory of human capital accumulation, as well as that of Colombian students in receiving communities.

Does immigration affect crime or beliefs about crime? We answer this question in the context of Chile, where the foreign-born population almost tripled in five years. To identify a causal effect, we use two strategies: a two-way fixed effects model at the municipality level and a 2SLS model, which is based on immigration toward destination countries other than Chile. First, we show that immigration increases concerns about crime and public security.

We use 2010-2017 data to explore the impact of migration on trade in Brazil. In order to account for the endogeneity of migrant location within the country and timing of migration, we use an instrument based on linguistic proximity among migrant groups and shocks that led to migration outflows from countries with a strong Brazilian connection, such as Haitis 2010 earthquake. The migrant population of Brazil remains small, but has increased considerably over the last decade.

Migration between Mexico and the US has seen a sharp reversal. Since 2007 more Mexicans are returning home relative to those who are migrating to the United States. In light of recent research that finds that migrants have positive effects on their origin communities upon return, this paper studies the potential effects of return migration on financial inclusion. We find that municipalities with higher return migration rates are more likely to have more bank branches and fixed-term accounts per capita.

Can repatriation inflows impact firm behavior in origin countries? To the extent that repatriated individuals bring large networks and know-how they can benefit local firms. We examine this question in the context of repatriation inflows from the United States and Mexico to El Salvador. For this purpose, we combine longitudinal firm-level panel data with inflows of repatriations exploiting municipal and annual variation during the period 2010 to 2017.

Nearly one quarter of El Salvador's population resides abroad as a result of historically high levels of violence, which have led to increasing family disintegration and many children being left behind in country of origin. Parental migration can have both positive and negative consequences on children left behind, where there are opposite forces taking place simultaneously. Remittances sent by migrant parents can increase financial resources previously unavailable which can be invested toward children's health and education.

This paper summarizes recent evidence on the effects of migration on a variety of outcomes including labor markets, education, health, crime and prejudice, international trade, assimilation, family separation, diaspora networks, and return migration. Given the lack of studies looking at migration flows between developing countries, this paper contributes to fill a gap in the literature by providing evidence of the impact of South - South migration in general and for the Latin American countries in particular.