Abstract
Immigration policies in western democracies have often been contrary to the predictions of the mainstream theory of international economics. Political parties that are predicted to adopt policies beneficial for lower-income constituents have not protected workers from labor-market competition. Nor have workers been protected from a fiscal burden of financing incomes and benefits for welfare-dependent immigrants. We explain the contradiction by immigrants being future voters. We give a hearing to alternative interpretations.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 149-174 |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Journal | Public Choice |
| Volume | 190 |
| Issue number | 1-2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
Funding
We thank Toke Aidt, Barry Chiswick, Debora Di Gioacchino, Arusha Cooray, François Facchini, Jan Fidrmuc, Jac Heckelman, Carsten Hefeker, Colin Jennings, Niklas Potrafke, Panu Poutvaara, William Shughart, Dennis Snower, Thomas Stratmann, Steven Tokarick, participants in the 2021 Silvaplana Workshop in Political Economy, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. We thank Kees Groenendijk for providing an English-language copy of his joint paper published in Spanish and Anna Maria Mayda for interchange on her forthcoming joint paper.
Keywords
- Illegal immigration
- Immigrant welfare dependency
- Immigration amnesties
- Immigration policy
- Policy exceptionalism
- Political ego rents
- Political entry barriers
