Part III Immigration Policy: Introduction Despite the huge and obvious income differences across countries and the natural desire for people to improve their lives, nearly all people in the world continue to live in their native countries. Even in the global economy of today, only a bit more than 200 million, or not more than 3 %, of the world s seven billion people are living outside the country they were born in. The numbers suggest that we should not focus all of our attention on the question of why people immigrate; rather, we should also ask why most people do not immigrate. This section of the book examines one of the main reasons why more people do not move to foreign countries: Countries generally restrict entry to foreigners. Nearly all countries maintain formal restrictions on immigration. Some countries prohibit almost all immigration. And most countries that do permit immigrants to enter accept them only under certain conditions and according to predetermined criteria. Some countries accept refugees on humanitarian grounds, and many countries accept some immigrants with specialized skills. A few countries, such as Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, and the USA, accept substantial number of immigrants as permanent residents. But even these countries are far from open to immigrants; they still go to great efforts to limit and restrict entry to foreigners. Immigration policies usually specify the criteria under which immigrant visas can be issued or refused. Some countries tie immigrant visas to specific skills or employment opportunities. Many governments offer employment visas that are often of limited duration. Also, immigrant destination countries often limit immigrant visas to people with family or close ethnic/cultural ties to the destination country.
370 Part III Immigration Policy: Introduction The Goals of Immigration Policy The great variety of immigration policies across countries suggests that countries have different policy objectives. However, the chapters on the theory and evidence on immigration suggest that immigration has many causes and consequences. Accordingly, it is very difficult to determine the goals of immigration policy by which to ultimately judge the success or failure of such polices. Before we can analyze immigration policies, we need to ask what exactly immigration policies should try to accomplish. This is clearly a subjective question, but there is no way to analyze policy without making such subjective determination. Note that the simple labor market model of immigration effectively makes the subjective determination that immigration be judged by how it affects the aggregate sum of individual incomes generated in the market economy. While many neoclassical economists have somehow convinced themselves that these assumptions permit economists to reach objective conclusions about economic policy, this is obviously not the case. The only honest, scientific way to judge policy is to explicitly recognize the underlying assumptions of the models used and how those assumptions affect the conclusions reached by economic analysis. Economists must determine what they want immigration policy to accomplish before they can choose the models with which to analyze the results of the immigration policies. According to the immigration economist George Borjas (1995, p. 19):... the positive theory of immigration policy... is based on the idea that, distributional issues aside, the main objective of immigration policy should be to increase the national income accruing to natives. It is far from clear that immigration policy should pursue this objective. The immigration statutes reflect a political consensus that incorporates the conflicting social and economic interests of various demographic, socioeconomic, and ethnic groups, as well as political and humanitarian concerns. Clearly, a country has to answer some very difficult questions when it formulates its immigration policies. For example, should a country s immigration policies be designed with the objective of maximizing the welfare of natives, or should immigration policies also be concerned with the welfare of immigrants? To what degree should immigration policy take the well-being of other countries into consideration? Should certain groups of people be favored over others? Are there basic welfare levels that must be maintained for all people? The immigration policies that we observe being applied by countries throughout the world reflect how countries have effectively answered these types of questions. This is not to say that countries always explicitly address these tough questions. Often, immigration policy seems to hinge on issues related to only a few of the many real causes and consequences of immigration. Immigration policy also reflects a society s culture. For example, immigration policies depend on whether a society s culture leads people to view human society from the classic liberal perspective of the individual or from the perspective of a collective community. If the pursuit of individual freedom is foremost, then people will be less likely to insist
The Goals of Immigration Policy 371 their government impose barriers to the free exit and entry of people into their countries. On the other hand, if people have a strong sense of community or common culture, then they may be more likely to favor restrictions on the entry of foreigners. Highly nationalistic cultures tend to prefer immigration policies that eliminate perceived threats to national identity and culture. Carens (1987, p. 251) points out that the classic liberal view offers little basis for drawing fundamental distinctions between citizens and aliens who seek to become citizens. Others who claim to base their thinking on the classical liberal principles arrive at similar conclusions. For example, Nozick (1974), the libertarian school, and Objectivists like the philosopher Rand (1967) would give national governments few roles beyond the protection of personal property and the freedom from abuse or intimidation by others. However, not every school of thought inspired by classic liberalism concludes that government should be severely limited in its scope. Classic liberalism also led to the social-contractionist philosophy of Rawls (1971). In seeking to define what makes a society just, Rawls reasoned that a truly unbiased definition of social justice can only be arrived at from behind a veil of ignorance that hides one s own circumstances. That is, a just society is the one people would choose to be born in if, hypothetically, they did not know their actual social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, level of wealth, education, talent, and other personal and social characteristics. Rawls reasoned that people should be especially concerned about the conditions of the least well-off people in a society because, from behind their veil of ignorance, they know that they could be one of those unfortunate people. Under Rawls definition of social justice, government has the expanded role of not only providing people personal freedom, but it should also provide assistance for the unfortunate and the unlucky. Rawls (1971) also argues that government, as the representative of all citizens of a country, should maintain minimum living standards, social justice, and equal educational opportunities. It is not clear that Rawls concept of social justice leads to conclusions about immigration policy that differ substantially from the libertarian and objectivist descendants of classic liberalism. One could argue that social justice points to keeping the borders open for immigrants. People would certainly like to have the freedom to immigrate to another country if, after emerging from behind their veil of ignorance, they found themselves living in a country with civil war, widespread poverty, or active discrimination against the specific personal characteristics they might happen to be born with. However, Rawls view of social justice could also lead to the conclusion that a socially just national society must be protected from the disruptive inflow of foreign immigrants. Indeed, we often hear groups opposed to immigration arguing that the entry of foreigners into the country changes the income distribution, lowers wages of the least fortunate, and causes some people to suffer difficult changes in lifestyles. Note, however, that Rawls himself never intended his veil of ignorance to stop at the border. Finally, yet another strand of classic liberalism led to the type of utilitarian thinking that lies behind the traditional models of immigration we have presented in this book. These models suggest that the net gains from immigration are positive
372 Part III Immigration Policy: Introduction under most reasonable assumptions, although there are substantial shifts in welfare among distinct groups. While these models show why some people and groups might oppose open immigration, the social welfare functions that underlie these utilitarian models usually lead to the conclusion that human welfare is maximized by completely opening the borders to immigrants. We can conclude, therefore, that many schools of liberal thought tend to oppose widespread restrictions on immigration, but there is plenty of room for argument about specific policies and goals, especially when there is doubt about exactly how immigrants affect the welfare of natives. The community perspective, as opposed to the liberal perspective, is much more likely to favor barriers to immigration. This perspective accepts that a sense of community is fundamental to human behavior because humans evolved as members of small hunter-gatherer groups, protective of each other and fearful of outsiders. Psychology, neuroscientific studies, and experimental economics have provided ample research confirming that people care about others, but they tend to have empathy and demonstrate altruism mostly for people they know and closely identify with. Modern societies have grown to where the nation is now the basic political unit for making rules and governing human activity, and modern humans tend to view the nation as their community. Hence, people care much more about the welfare of their compatriots than they do about the welfare of foreigners. Kopczuk, Slemrod, and Yitzhaki (2005) test Americans actual willingness to provide assistance to people inside and outside their country, and they interpret the results as showing that observed behavior suggests that Americans value of a foreigner s welfare may be as little as 1/2,000 of the value they put on the welfare of an American. Whether or not classic liberals would find such attitudes just, actual human behavior seems to indicate that people would prefer their government to restrict the movement of people across the nation s borders whenever their arrival threatens the welfare of the community, the national culture, or even just some substantial number of fellow citizens. In sum, immigration policy is the outcome of a complex interaction of economic forces, political systems, social structures, and basic human behavior. How culture and people s hardwired mental thought processes shape their attitudes towards foreigners may shape a country s immigration policy more than many of the economic forces detailed earlier in this book. Classifying Immigration Policies In analyzing and comparing immigration policies across countries and over time, it will prove useful to classify immigration policies according to a set of goals that immigration policies are intended to accomplish. Specifically, a nation s immigration policy consists of a set of laws, regulations, and bureaucratic procedures that address the following questions:
Classifying Immigration Policies 373 1. Is immigration to be restricted? 2. If indeed immigration is to be restricted, how many immigrants will be allowed to enter the country? 3. If the number of foreigners seeking to immigrate exceeds the number of immigrants to be allowed into the country, what criteria will be used to ration the scarce entry permits? 4. How many resources will be devoted to enforcing the immigration restrictions? 5. What methods will be used to enforce immigration restrictions? 6. How are immigrants to be treated compared to citizens of the country? 7. Will all immigrants be treated the same, or will some categories of immigrants be favored over others? Every country answers these questions differently. Some countries severely limit the number of entry visas, but they turn a blind eye to unauthorized immigrants who sneak across the border. Other countries severely punish unauthorized immigrants. In some countries immigrants enjoy virtually all the rights accorded to native citizens, but in other countries immigrants can never gain the full rights and privileges enjoyed by natives. In the chapters of this section of the book, our descriptions of immigration policy will be framed around these seven questions. By addressing the same seven questions, it becomes possible to compare immigration policies over time and across countries. Chapter 14 of this Part of the book presents the history of the US immigration policy, from before independence through the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The USA makes a very good case study because it has accepted more immigrants than any other country over the past 200 years, and it continues to be the most popular immigrant destination today. Also interesting is how the US immigration policy has shifted over the past 200 years. The radical shifts in the US immigration policy facilitate distinguishing how economic, political, and demographic forces shape the formation and application of immigration policy. Chapter 15 describes immigration policy in Canada, and Chap. 16 covers the interesting case of Western Europe. Western European countries were the source of millions of immigrants during the nearly five centuries between 1500 and 1960, but now Europe is itself a destination for large number of foreign immigrants. Not all countries have followed the same paths as have the US policymakers, and the variations in experiences and policies across countries and regions provide further insight into the complex economic and political processes that shape immigration policies. The policies adopted by a government tend to reflect a country s national goals and interests, the gains and losses experienced throughout the economy, and the motivations for people to immigrate, just as theory and evidence suggest. In short, the study of immigration policy provides a most interesting way to bring everything together from the previous two sections of the book.
374 Part III Immigration Policy: Introduction References Borjas, J. (1995). The economic benefits from immigration. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(2), 3 22. Carens, J. (1987). Aliens and citizens: The case for open borders. The Review of Politics, 49(2), 251 273. Kopczuk, W., Slemrod, J., & Yitzhaki, S. (2005). The limitations of decentralized world redistribution: An optimal taxation approach. European Economic Review, 49(4), 1051 1079. Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, state and Utopia. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Rand, A. (1967). Capitalism: The unknown ideal. New York: Signet Books. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.