Voting on Mass Immigration Restriction

digital

Article

Magazine

RIVISTA INTERNAZIONALE DI SCIENZE SOCIALI

Fascicle

RIVISTA INTERNAZIONALE DI SCIENZE SOCIALI - 2005 - 1

Title

Voting on Mass Immigration Restriction

Authors

Francesco Magris, Giovanna Russo

Publisher

Vita e Pensiero

Format

Article |

Pdf

Online from

01-2005

Issn

0035-676X (print) | 1827-7918 (digital)

€ 6.00

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Description

We study how immigration policies are determined under voting in a two-country model where immigration redistributes income from wages to capital. Migration decisions are endogenous, there exist border enforcement costs and preference for home-country consumption. We model the migration policy as a pure entry rationing rather than a necessarily porous screening system. Unlike the existing results of polarization, our findings show that preferences over frontier closure are distributed on a continuum, going from total closure to total openness. Thus, the Condorcet winning immigration policy may well be an interior solution. Our results fit the real-life observation that both perfect closure and perfect openness are rare events. We also study the case of a referendum over two alternative policies and show that its outcome depends upon the location of the median voter with respect to the individual indifferent between the two alternatives.