ABSTRACT
In the process of writing this chapter, law SB 1070 was passed by the state of Arizona, which requires that police determine the immigrant status of people they stop and suspect are in the country illegally. Some referred to this as sanctioning racial profiling. The passage of this law raised the importance of “race” and brought new attention to the way individuals are identified by others, in particular by people in positions of political or hiring authority. How people are identified by others can substantially impact what happens to them in everyday life and in the labor market. In the case of Latinos, there is extensive literature on the impact of race, skin color, and phenotype on their life chances and socioeconomic outcomes (see, for example, Arce et al., 1987; Cotton, 1993; Darity et al., 2002; Espino & Franz, 2002; Frank et al., 2010; Gomez, 2000; Logan, 2004; Murguia & Telles, 1996; Rodríguez, 1990, 1991; Tafoya, 2004; Telles & Murguia, 1990). It is, however, only recently that this issue has moved to a more public and political arena, where it has been tied to the contested issue of undocumented immigration. Indeed, replicating the results of earlier studies on all Latinos, Frank and colleagues’ (2010) study of immigrants who were granted legal permanent residency in 2003 found that darker-skinned Latinos earned less than their lighter-skinned counterparts.
