Market Benefits for Legalized Immigrants

According to Eurostat, over the year 2017, 650,000 first-time asylum seekers applied in the EU-28. Applicants whose requests for international protection are rejected become illegal and add themselves to the large population of undocumented foreigners. Modeling advantages and disadvantages resulting from legalization programs is important for determining the migration policies. This is what Alessandra Casarico, Giovanni Facchini and Tommaso Frattini have done in What Drives the Legalization of Immigrants? Evidence from IRCA.

They focused on labor market effects that were previously overlooked by the literature. "When they are granted legal status, high-skilled migrants have access to jobs that fit their potential, thus inducing an increase in output", says Alessandra Casarico, Associate Professor of Public Finance and Coordinator of the Welfare State and Taxation Unit of the Dondena Research Centre. "In the presence of a redistributive system, a potential loss results from low-skilled immigrant workers gaining access to the welfare state".

The authors developed a theoretical model based on labor market and welfare state channels and used the voting behavior of U.S. representatives on the Immigration Reform and Control Act as the testing ground for their theory. This is one of the largest legalization programs in history: in 1986, 2.8 million individuals became entitled to permanent residency in the U.S. The empirical evidence provided strong support for the predictions of the model. The representatives were more likely to vote the amnesty in districts where the gain to aggregate income induced by granting legalized workers access to employment opportunities was greater and the degree of redistribution was lower. "Our model assumes that policy makers act as perfect welfare maximizers. Future research could take into account other forces that play a role in shaping immigration policies and the possibility of strategic interactions among representatives".

Read more about this topic:
The Mark of the Great Migrations. Article by Andrea Colli
Massimo Anelli. The Political Costs of Emigration
Carlo Devillanova. The Uninformed Find the Door to Healthcare Shut
Joseph-Simon Goerlach. Moving from the South to the North Improves Your Salary. But Not Your Wealth
Paolo Pinotti. Foreign Students at School: How to Break Educational Segregation
Graziella Romeo. The Contradictions of the European Legal System