 International Migration and Human RightsNo 16472, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc Abstract: Freedom of movement is considered a basic human right by the majority of countries of the world. As defined in practice, it encompasses the right to move internally within a country, the right to move abroad, and the right to return from abroad. It does not include the right of an individual from one sovereign nation to move to another. In this paper, I examine whether there is an economic rationale for restricting the rights of individuals to move across borders. The typical individual who migrates from a poor developing country to the United States sees an increase in income by a factor of four, largely as a result of the immense international differences in labor productivity that exist in the world today. As an illustrative example, I estimate that migration from Mexico to the United States raises global income by an amount equivalent to roughly one percent of US GDP. JEL-codes: F2 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published as “International Migration and Human Rights,” in Katherine Hite and Mark Unger, eds., Sustaining Human Rights i n the Twenty - First Century , Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, 245 - 266. Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16472 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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