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Immigration Control and the Welfare State

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Author Info

  • Gordon M. Myers

    (Department of Economics, University of Waterloo)

  • Yorgos Y. Papageorgiou

Abstract

We examine immigration policy and its redistributive effects using a model of a rich country which must spend on border control in order to regulate immigration from a poor country. There are owners and workers in the rich country, and a public sector whi ch makes redistributive transfers from owners to workers. We first consider the case where illegal immigrants have access to the public sector, a situation currently observed in many countries. We show that as border control becomes more expensive inequal ity in the rich country increases, redistributive transfers may increase or decrease, some immigration is permitted and foreign aid may be used by the rich country in order to reduce the migration pressure along its border with the poor country. Because of nonconvexities, we also show that a small decrease in the aversion to inequality or a small increase in the poor country's population can lead to the collapse of the redistributive public sector. We then consider excluding illegal immigrants from the pu blic sector (e.g. California Proposition 187). We find that the possibility of collapse vanishes and that the rich country takes the toughest official stance on immigration but does not enforce it with border controls.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Waterloo, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 97001.

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Date of creation: Jan 1997
Date of revision: Jan 1997
Handle: RePEc:wat:wpaper:97001

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References

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  1. Djajic, Slobodan, 1987. "Illegal aliens, unemployment and immigration policy," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 235-249, February.
  2. Ethier, Wilfred J, 1986. "Illegal Immigration: The Host-Country Problem," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 56-71, March.
  3. Chiswick, Barry R, 1988. "Illegal Immigration and Immigration Control," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 101-15, Summer.
  4. Klaus F. Zimmermann, 1995. "Tackling the European Migration Problems," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 45-62, Spring.
  5. Myers, G.M. & Mansoorian, A., 1995. "On the Consequences of Government Objectives for Economies with Mobile Populations," Papers 95-2, York (Canada) - Department of Economics.
  6. Wildasin, D.E., 1992. "Income Restribution and Migration," Papers 92-003, Indiana - Center for Econometric Model Research.
  7. Bond, Eric W. & Chen, Tain-Jy, 1987. "The welfare effects of illegal immigration," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3-4), pages 315-328, November.
  8. Wellisch, Dietmar & Wildasin, David E., 1996. "Decentralized income redistribution and immigration," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 187-217, January.
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Cited by:
  1. Robert Fenge & Volker Meier, 2006. "Subsidies for Wages and Infrastructure: How to Restrain Undesired Immigration," CESifo Working Paper Series 1741, CESifo Group Munich.
  2. Epstein, Gil S & Weiss, Avi, 2001. "A Theory of Immigration Amnesties," CEPR Discussion Papers 2830, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  3. Subhayu Bandyopadhyay & Dustin Chambers & Jonathan Munemo, 2012. "Foreign aid, illegal immigration, and host country welfare," Working Papers 2012-007, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
  4. Jaume Sempere, 2008. "Redistribution as a Local Public Good Subject to Congestion," Economia Mexicana NUEVA EPOCA, , vol. 0(1), pages 49-62, January-J.
  5. Tapio Palokangas, 2008. "Self-Interested Governments, Unionization, and Legal and Illegal Immigration," Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 2(1), pages 007-020, March.
  6. Gil S. Epstein & Avi Weiss, 2009. "The Why, When and How of Immigration Amnesties," Working Papers 2009-24, Department of Economics, Bar-Ilan University.
  7. J. Atsu Amegashie, 2000. "A political economy model of immigration quotas," Discussion Papers dp00-19, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, revised 19 Sep 2000.
  8. Giora Dula & Nava Kahana & Tikva Lecker, 2006. "How to partly bounce back the struggle against illegal immigration to the source countries," Journal of Population Economics, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 315-325, June.
  9. Gordon M. Myers & Yorgos Y. Papageorgiou, 2000. "Towards a Better System for Immigration Control," Discussion Papers dp00-17, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, revised Sep 2000.
  10. Amegashie, J.A., 2002. "A Political Economy Model of Immigration Quotas," Working Papers 2002-9, University of Guelph, Department of Economics.
  11. Panos Hatzipanayotou & Michael S. Michael, 2005. "Migration, Tied Foreign Aid and the Welfare State," CESifo Working Paper Series 1497, CESifo Group Munich.
  12. Amin, Mohammad & Mattoo, Aaditya, 2006. "Can guest worker schemes reduce illegal migration ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3828, The World Bank.

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