This note describes the key challenges facing the health, livelihoods, and mobility of internal and international migrants and their families due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The note presents the policy options available to governments to address these challenges and describes the assistance that the World Bank can offer in areas related to social protection and jobs to support these efforts.

How natives adjust is central to an understanding of the impact of immigration in destination countries. Using detailed labor force data for Malaysia for 1990-2010, we provide estimates of native responses to immigration on multiple extensive margins and rare evidence for a developing country. Instrumental variable estimates show that increased immigration to a state causes substantial internal inward migration, consistent with the fact that immigration increases the demand for native workers. Relocating Malaysian workers are accompanied by their spouses (three-quarters of whom are housewives) and children who attend school. We find that these effects are concentrated among middle-and lower-skilled Malaysians.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

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The perception that immigration fuels crime is an important source of anti-immigrant sentiment. Using Malaysian data for 2003-10, this paper provides estimates of the overall impact of economic immigration on crime, and evidence on different socioeconomic mechanisms underpinning this relationship. The IV estimates suggest that immigration decreases crime rates, with an elasticity of around À0.97 for property and-1.8 violent crimes. Three-quarters of the negative causal relationship between immigration and property crime rates can be explained by the impact of immigration on the underlying economic environment faced by natives. The reduction in violent crime rates is less readily explained by these factors.