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Congestion and Optimal Immigration Policy
Author(s) -
Chao ChiChur,
Hazari Bharat R.,
Laffargue JeanPierre
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
review of development economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.531
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1467-9361
pISSN - 1363-6669
DOI - 10.1111/rode.12017
Subject(s) - stylized fact , immigration , government (linguistics) , economics , population , welfare , demographic economics , political science , market economy , sociology , law , linguistics , philosophy , demography , macroeconomics
This paper presents a model to explain the stylized fact that many countries have a low ratio of migrants in their population while some countries have a high ratio of migrants. Immigration improves the income of the domestic residents, but migrants also increase the congestion of public services. If migrants are unskilled and therefore pay low taxes, and the government does not limit access to these services, then the welfare of the domestic residents decreases with the number of migrants. Visa auctions can lower the cost of immigration control and substitute legal migrants for illegal migrants. If the government decides to limit the access of migrants to public services, immigration control becomes unnecessary and the optimal number of migrants can be very large.