We examine data from Australia, Canada, and the United States to assess the potential for immigrant screening policies to influence the labor market performance of skilled immigrants. Our estimates point to improvements in employment rates and weekly earnings of male university-educated immigrants in all three countries concomitant with policy reforms. Nonetheless, the gains are modest in comparison to a substantial and persistent performance advantage of US skilled immigrants. Given that there is increasingly little to distinguish the screening policies of these countries, we interpret the US advantage as primarily reflecting the relative positive self-selectivity of US immigrants.

We use the confidential files of the Canadian Census 1991-2006, combined with information from O*NET on the skill requirements of jobs, to show that the labor market patterns of female immigrants do not fit the profile of secondary workers, but rather conform to the recent experience of married native women with rising participation (and wage assimilation). At best, only relatively uneducated immigrant women in unskilled occupations may fit the profile of secondary workers. Educated immigrant women experience skill assimilation over time: a reduction in physical strength and a gradual increase in analytical skills required in their jobs relative to natives.