This publication summarizes some of the key research findings from current literature and applies the lessons from it to the potential migration problem faced by countries in the EU. Its main objective is to present a review of existing economic theory and empirical evidence to evaluate the likelihood of migration flows from acceding or neighboring countries toward the current EU member states. This publication is a Technical Paper sponsored by the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network of the World Bank's Europe and Central Asia Division. It is part of a comprehensive series regarding the many important factors that influence European Union (EU) accession in the Central and East European countries (CEEC). The topics in the series cover both the social and economic aspects of accession across a broad range of sectors. The series also provides background information for specific acceding countries. These publications will be of interest to EU member and candidate countries, their ministries, and any one studying the accession issue.

Since 1965 the foreign-born population of the United States has swelled from 9.6 million or 5 percent of the population to 45 million or 14 percent in 2015. Today, about one-quarter of the U.S. population consists of immigrants or the children of immigrants. Given the sizable representation of immigrants in the U.S. population, their health is a major influence on the health of the population as a whole. On average, immigrants are healthier than native-born Americans. Yet, immigrants also are subject to the systematic marginalization and discrimination that often lead to the creation of health disparities. To explore the link between immigration and health disparities, the Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity held a workshop in Oakland, California, on November 28, 2017. This summary of that workshop highlights the presentations and discussions of the workshop.

The Economics of Immigration is written as a both a reference for researchers and as a textbook on the economics of immigration. It is aimed at two audiences: (1) researchers who are interested in learning more about how economists approach the study of human migration flows; and (2) graduate students taking a course on migration or a labor economics course where immigration is one of the subfields studied. The book covers the economic theory of immigration, which explains why people move across borders and details the consequences of such movements for the source and destination economies. The book also describes immigration policy, providing both a history of immigration policy in a variety of countries and using the economic theory of immigration to explain the determinants and consequences of the policies. The timing of this book coincides with the emergence of immigration as a major political and economic issue in the USA, Japan Europe and many developing countries.

The Economics of International Migration is a collection of the fundamental articles written by Giovanni Peri on the economic determinants and consequences of international migration. These papers have provided the theoretical framework and empirical analysis for a rethinking of the economics of migration, going beyond the Canonical model of labor demand and supply used until the 1990s. Beginning with a simple model that recognizes the differences between immigrants and natives as workers, the articles develop the analysis of complementarity, specialization and productivity effect of immigrants in developed economies. The book then presents a series of papers analyzing and testing the economic motivation for international migration. Finally, the focus is shifted to the effect of immigration policies and their consequences on immigration and the economy.

Economics of Immigration provides students with the tools needed to examine the economic impact of immigration and immigration policies over the past century. Students will develop an understanding of why and how people migrate across borders and will learn how to analyze the economic causes and effects of immigration. The main objectives of the book are for students to understand the decision to migrate; to understand the impact of immigration on markets and government budgets; and to understand the consequences of immigration policies in a global context. From the first chapter, students will develop an appreciation of the importance of immigration as a separate academic field within labor economics and international economics. Topics covered include the effect of immigration on labor markets, housing markets, international trade, tax revenues, human capital accumulation, and government fiscal balances. The book also considers the impact of immigration on what firms choose to produce, and even on the ethnic diversity of restaurants and on financial markets, as well as the theory and evidence on immigrants’ economic assimilation. The textbook includes a comparative study of immigration policies in a number of immigrant-receiving and sending countries, beginning with the history of immigration policy in the United States. Finally, the book explores immigration topics that directly affect developing countries, such as remittances, brain drain, human trafficking, and rural-urban internal migration. Readers will also be fully equipped with the tools needed to understand and contribute to policy debates on this controversial topic. This is the first textbook to comprehensively cover the economics of immigration, and it is suitable both for economics students and for students studying migration in other disciplines, such as sociology and politics.

Millions of people—nearly 3 percent of the world’s population—no longer live in the country where they were born. Every day, migrants enter not only the United States but also developed countries without much of a history of immigration. Some of these nations have switched in a short span of time from being the source of immigrants to being a destination for them. International migration is today a central subject of research in modern labor economics, which seeks to put into perspective and explain this historic demographic transformation. Immigration Economics synthesizes the theories, models, and econometric methods used to identify the causes and consequences of international labor flows. Economist George Borjas lays out with clarity and rigor a full spectrum of topics, including migrant worker selection and assimilation, the impact of immigration on labor markets and worker wages, and the economic benefits and losses that result from immigration. Two important themes emerge: First, immigration has distributional consequences: some people gain, but some people lose. Second, immigrants are rational economic agents who attempt to do the best they can with the resources they have, and the same holds true for native workers of the countries that receive migrants. This straightforward behavioral proposition, Borjas argues, has crucial implications for how economists and policymakers should frame contemporary debates over immigration.

This book presents a series of research articles written over the past four decades by leading economists George J. Borjas and Barry R. Chiswick. Borjas and Chiswick are leading experts on the adjustment of immigrants in their destination country and their impact on the economy. Although they worked separately throughout their careers, and did not always agree, their intellectual interaction has greatly increased understanding of the economic consequences of international migration and immigration policy across developed immigrant receiving countries. This volume brings together their contributions for the first time to demonstrate how public policy issues on immigration have evolved over time. An in-depth analysis of the key issues relating to international migration Foundations of Migration Economics explores the assimilation of immigrants, focusing on the earning changes of immigrants with a longer duration in the host economy; how immigrant networks and ethnic enclaves influence the labor market and linguistic adjustment of immigrants; determinants of language proficiency and to what extent pre-migration skills are effectively employed by the destination; and the effect of immigration on the earnings of earlier waves of immigrants and native-born workers.

The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration finds that the long-term impact of immigration on the wages and employment of native-born workers overall is very small, and that any negative impacts are most likely to be found for prior immigrants or native-born high school dropouts. First-generation immigrants are more costly to governments than are the native-born, but the second generation are among the strongest fiscal and economic contributors in the U.S. This report concludes that immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the U.S. More than 40 million people living in the United States were born in other countries, and almost an equal number have at least one foreign-born parent. Together, the first generation (foreign-born) and second generation (children of the foreign-born) comprise almost one in four Americans. It comes as little surprise, then, that many U.S. residents view immigration as a major policy issue facing the nation. Not only does immigration affect the environment in which everyone lives, learns, and works, but it also interacts with nearly every policy area of concern, from jobs and the economy, education, and health care, to federal, state, and local government budgets. The changing patterns of immigration and the evolving consequences for American society, institutions, and the economy continue to fuel public policy debate that plays out at the national, state, and local levels. The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration assesses the impact of dynamic immigration processes on economic and fiscal outcomes for the United States, a major destination of world population movements. This report will be a fundamental resource for policy makers and law makers at the federal, state, and local levels but extends to the general public, nongovernmental organizations, the business community, educational institutions, and the research community.

This handbook presents a collection of high-quality, authoritative scientific contributions on cross-border migration, written by a carefully selected group of recognized migration experts from around the globe. In recent years, cross-border migration has become an important and intriguing issue, from both a scientific and policy perspective. In the ‘age of migration’, the volume of cross-border movements of people continues to rise, while the nature of migration flows – in terms of the determinants, length of stay, effects on the sending and host countries, and legal status of migrants – is changing dramatically. Based on a detailed economic-geographical analysis, this handbook studies the motives for cross-border migration, the socio-economic implications for sending countries and regions, the locational choice determinants for cross-border migrants, and the manifold economic-geographic consequences for host countries and regions. Given the complexity of migration decisions and their local or regional impacts, a systematic typology of migrants (motives, legal status, level of education, gender, age, singles or families, etc.) is provided, together with an assessment of push factors in the place of origin and pull factors at the destination. On the basis of a solid analytical framework and reliable empirical evidence, it examines the impacts of emigration for sending areas and of immigration for receiving areas, and provides a comprehensive discussion of the policy dimensions of cross-border migration.

The United States is now admitting nearly one million legal immigrants per year, while the flow of illegal aliens into the country continues to increase steadily. The debate over immigration policy has typically focused on three fundamental questions: How do immigrants perform economically relative to others? What effects do immigrants have on the employment opportunities of other workers? What kind of immigration policy is most beneficial to the host country? This authoritative volume represents a move beyond purely descriptive assessments of labor market consequences toward a more fully developed analysis of economic impacts across the social spectrum. Exploring the broader repercussions of immigration on education, welfare, Social Security, and crime, as well as the labor market, these papers assess dimensions not yet taken into account by traditional cost-benefit calculations. This collection offers new insights into the kinds of economic opportunities and outcomes that immigrant populations might expect for themselves and future generations.