 Dealing with undocumented immigrants: the welfare effects of amnesties and deportationsDEM Discussion Paper Series from Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg Abstract: This paper aims to assess the effects of two different policies dealing with undocumented immigrants on agents’ welfare: amnesties and deportations. I develop a two-period overlapping generations model which accounts for the ex-ante production by undocumented workers and their partial contribution and access to public transfers. Additional channels, such as the discrimination on the labor market and a different productivity of regularized workers are also discussed. The impact of a migration policy strongly depends on the wage effects of the legalized/ deported workers and their net fiscal contribution. The calibration of the model for the United States in 2014 allows to disentangle the importance of the different channels at work. Overall the impact of the two policies on natives’ welfare is quite limited (between -0.1% and +0.15%). Retired agents benefit from an amnesty and are harmed by a deportation. The effect on workers is ambiguous and depends on the wage and fiscal effects in addition to the change in the returns on savings. Keywords: undocumented immigration; amnesty; regularization; deportation; discrimination. (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:luc:wpaper:17-11 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in DEM Discussion Paper Series from Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC. |
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