The rhetoric of closed borders: quotas, lax enforcement and illegal migration

Cecilia Testa and Giovanni Facchini

No 8245, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Despite restrictive migration policies, large numbers of undocumented migrants reside in many destination countries. If official migration targets are not enforced, why are they devised? To address this puzzle, we develop a political agency model with uncertainty on the migrants' supply, where an elected official can either have preferences congruent with the median voter, or prefer a larger number of migrants. We show that, if the incumbent prefers more migrants than the median, he might find it optimal to announce a binding quota to be re-elected, and strategically relax its enforcement, or choose an ineffective instrument like border control.

Keywords: Illegal immigration; Immigration policy; Political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-02
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The rhetoric of closed borders: Quotas, lax enforcement and illegal immigration (2021)
Working Paper: The Rhetoric of Closed Borders: Quotas, Lax Enforcement and Illegal Migration (2014)
Working Paper: The rhetoric of closed borders: quotas, lax enforcement and illegal migration (2010)
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