Unemployment and the Immigration Surplus

Theory and Methods Research Paper 2008 / 31 Unemployment and the Immigration Surplus

Within a small open economy fair wage model with unemployment of unskilled workers, we show that exogenous unskilled immigration increases the welfare of natives if the elasticity of the inverse labour demands exceeds a positive finite threshold. This threshold depends positively on the displacement ratio of native workers by immigrants and negatively on the share of immigrants in the unskilled...

Explaining attitudes towards immigration : is there an “ immigration surplus ” ?

Why is there such wide-spread opposition to immigration, although attitudes are generally favorable towards trade? Using concepts from population ethics, this paper shows that impartial observers oppose unskilled immigration if they are inequality-averse, base their decisions on national interest, and have an integrative view of immigration. Moreover, unskilled immigration makes redistribution ...

Immigration Unemployment Relationship: the Evidence from Canada*

This paper examines the relationship between unemployment and immigration in Canada. The bidirectional causality test finds no evidence of a significant effect of Canadian immigration on unemployment. Cointegration tests indicate that there is no observed increase in aggregate unemployment due to immigration in the long run. The results from the causality test based on the vector error correcti...

Working Paper Series Politics, Unemployment, and the Enforcement of Immigration Law Politics, Unemployment, and the Enforcement of Immigration Law

Immigration control-related audits and their resulting sanctions are not solely determined by impartial enforcement of laws and regulations. They are also determined by the incentives faced by vote-maximizing congressmen, agents acting on their behalf, and workers likely to compete with immigrants in the local labor market. In this paper we test to what extent congressional oversight, i.e., leg...

The Unemployment Impact of Immigration in Oecd Countries