Voting on Mass Immigration Restriction

Francesco Magris and Giuseppe Russo

Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali, 2005, vol. 113, issue 1, 67-92

Abstract: We study how immigration policies are determined under voting in a two-country model where immigration redistributes income from wages to capital. Migration decisions are endogenous, there exist border enforcement costs and preference for home-country consumption. We model the migration policy as a pure entry rationing rather than a necessarily porous screening system. Unlike the existing results of polarization, our findings show that preferences over frontier closure are distributed on a continuum, going from total closure to total openness. Thus, the Condorcet winning immigration policy may well be an interior solution. Our results fit the real-life observation that both perfect closure and perfect openness are rare events. We also study the case of a referendum over two alternative policies and show that its outcome depends upon the location of the median voter with respect to the individual indifferent between the two alternatives.

Keywords: immigration policy; voting; referendum; Condorcet winner (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F22 J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Voting on mass immigration restriction (2004)
Working Paper: Voting on Mass Immigration Restriction (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vep:journl:y:2005:v:113:i:1:p:67-92

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