 Attracting Skilled Immigrants: An Overview of Recent Policy Developments in Advanced CountriesGiovanni Facchini and Elisabetta Lodigiani () National Institute Economic Review, 2014, vol. 229, issue 1, R3-R21 Abstract: In this paper we review the policies put in place by the main Western destination countries to attract highly skilled migrants. Two main systems can be identified. On the one hand, employer-driven schemes typically call for the migrant to meet a set of minimum skill requirements and to have a job offer before a work visa can be issued. On the other, migrant-driven schemes typically do not require a job offer, and instead select the migrant based on a set of characteristics chosen by the policymaker. Employer-driven schemes are the dominant policy tool in the sample of countries we consider in the analysis, and only Australia, Canada and New Zealand have made migrant-driven schemes the mainstay of their skill selective immigration policy. The preliminary evidence we review suggests that the latter are more effective in increasing the skill level of the immigrant population, and casts doubts on the usefulness of new initiatives like the EU blue card that are still based on an employer-driven system. Keywords: Skilled immigration; immigration policy (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:sae:niesru:v:229:y:2014:i:1:p:r3-r21 Access Statistics for this article More articles in National Institute Economic Review from National Institute of Economic and Social Research Contact information at EDIRC. |
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