The Political Economy of Migration Enforcement: Domestic Versus Border Control

Abstract

We study migration policy enforcement by an elected government. The policy-maker faces uncertainty on the supply of migrants, but has more information than the public on its preferences and the extent and effectiveness of its enforcement activities. We show that a utilitarian government preferring more migrants than the majority may find it optimal to set a restrictive target to please the median voter, while relaxing its enforcement to admit more foreigners in a concealed way. Lax enforcement may be achieved either by deploying inadequate resources on cost-effective activities (domestic enforcement) or by allocating a larger budget on less effective tools (border enforcement). The attractiveness of one instrument over the other depends on the size of the immigrant flow: if the supply is large, border enforcement might be preferred because, although more costly, it brings the number of migrants closer to the utilitarian optimum. Hence, re-election concerns might provide a rationale for the widespread use of less a effective enforcement tool, such as border control.JEL classification: F22, J61.

Optimal education policy and human capital accumulation in the context of brain drain

“…Ortega and Polevieja (2012) is of related interest. There is a growing literature on the political economy of immigration policy, starting with the pioneering work of Benhabib (1996) and extensions within a dynamic framework, such as Ortega (2005) and Facchini and Testa (2015).…”

Transit migration

“… See, for example, Auriol and Mesnard (2013), Bandyopadhyay and Bandyopadhyay (), Bond and Chen (), Camacho, Mariani and Pensierosos (), Djajić (), Ethier (), Facchini and Testa (), Friebel and Guriev (), Gaytan‐Fregoso and Lahiri (), Hazari and Sgro (), Tamura () and Woodland and Yoshida (). Hanson () provides a very useful survey of the literature on unauthorized immigration between Mexico and the United States.…”

Immigration Policies and the Choice between Documented and Undocumented Migration

“… Theoretical studies on the problem of illegal immigration include Ethier (), Bond and Chen (), Djajić (), Yoshida (), Gaytan‐Fregoso and Lahiri (), Kondoh (), Woodland and Yoshida (), Friebel and Guriev (), Tamura (), Facchini and Testa (), and Camacho et al . (), to name but a few. …”