Immigrant Selection Research Articles

Legal Status at Entry, Economic Performance, and Self-Employment Proclivity: A Bi-National Study of Immigrants

There are concerns about the attachment of immigrants to the labor force, and the potential policy responses. This paper uses a bi-national survey on immigrant performance to investigate the sorting of individuals into full-time paid-employment and entrepreneurship and their economic success. Particular attention is paid to the role of legal status at entry in the host country (worker, refugee, and family reunification), ethnic networks, enclaves and other differences among ethnicities for their integration in the labor market. Since the focus is on the understanding of the self-employment decision, a two-stage structural probit model is employed that determines the willingness to work full-time (against part-time employment and not working), and the choice between full-time paid work and self-employment. The choices are determined by the reservation wage for full-time work, and the perceived earnings from working in paid-employment and as entrepreneur, among other factors. Accounting for sample selectivity, the paper provides regressions explaining reservation wages, and actual earnings for paid-employment and self-employment, which provide the basis for such an analysis. The structural probit models suggest that the expected earnings differentials from working and reservation wages and for self-employment and paid-employment earnings matter much, although only among a number of other determinants. For Germany, legal status at entry is important; former refugees and those migrants who arrive through family reunification are less likely to work full-time; refugees are also less self-employed. Those who came through the employment channel are more likely to be in full-time paid work. In Denmark, however, the status at entry variables do not play any significant role. This suggests that the Danish immigrant selection system is ineffective.

Immigrant Performance and Selective Immigration Policy: A European Perspective

The European Union aims at a stronger participation by its population in work to foster growth and welfare. There are concerns about the attachment of immigrants to the labour force, and discussions about the necessary policy responses. Integrated labour and migration policies are needed. The employment chances of the low-skilled are limited. Whereas Europe could benefit from a substantive immigration policy that imposes selection criteria that are more in line with economic needs, the substantial immigration into the European Union follows largely non-economic motives. This paper discusses the economic rationale of a selective immigration policy and provides empirical evidence about the adverse effects of current selection mechanisms.

Plumbing the brain drain.

Opportunity is the driving force of migration. Unsatisfied demands for higher education and skills, which have been created by the knowledge-based global economy, have generated unprecedented opportunities in knowledge-intensive service industries. These multi-trillion dollar industries include information, communication, finance, business, education and health. The leading industrialized nations are also the focal points of knowledge-intensive service industries and as such constitute centres of research and development activity that proactively draw in talented individuals worldwide through selective immigration policies, employment opportunities and targeted recruitment. Higher education is another major conduit of talent from less-developed countries to the centres of the knowledge-based global economy. Together career and educational opportunities drive "brain drain and recirculation". The departure of a large proportion of the most competent and innovative individuals from developing nations slows the achievement of the critical mass needed to generate the enabling context in which knowledge creation occurs. To favourably modify the asymmetric movement and distribution of global talent, developing countries must implement bold and creative strategies that are backed by national policies to: provide world-class educational opportunities, construct knowledge-based research and development industries, and sustainably finance the required investment for these strategies. Brazil, China and India have moved in this direction, offering world-class education in areas crucial to national development, such as biotechnology and information technology, paralleled by investments in research and development. As a result, only a small proportion of the most highly educated individuals migrate from these countries, and research and development opportunities employ national talent and even attract immigrants.

Gender, immigration policies and accreditation: valuing the skills of professional women migrants

Human capital is the most important form of wealth for a modern nation and countries with the most intellectual resources are achieving the highest rates of economic growth. In the drive for human capital, many industrialised countries are giving priority to policies aimed at attracting highly skilled immigrants. The number of skilled immigrants who settle permanently in these countries is not rising but there is a significant level of temporary movement of highly skilled labour from developing countries, particularly in information technology (IT), medicine, nursing and teaching. Women now account for an increased proportion of highly skilled migrants but there are still few analyses of their economic participation. Immigration selection and occupational entry policies are crucial for an understanding of the gendered experiences of migration for skilled migrants. This article draws together material from empirical work and reports/other literature on the situation facing professional women compared to men, both permanent and temporary, in the selection processes for migration and the post-arrival processes of accreditation and recognition.

Effects of immigration on labour markets and government budgets: the case of the Netherlands

Employing methods extracted from the literature, in combination with data on the Dutch economy, we assess the impact of immigration on the labour market and the public sector in the Netherlands. Additional labour supply due to immigration will have only a limited positive effect on the total income of natives, though redistribution between native groups is relatively large. The long run fiscal impact of immigrants will only be positive if their labour market performance at least equals that of natives. We conclude that selective labour immigration may contribute to the economic well-being of the host country. However, large-scale immigration of labour is not considered to be effective in alleviating the financial burden of ageing in the Netherlands.

Supreme values as the basis for terror

Supreme values, being absolutely true to believers, have to be preferred to all else, and can require acts of terror in which terrorists are willing to take the lives of others and also give up their own lives to further the sought objectives. It is therefore difficult to prevent terrorism based on supreme values. A model shows how supreme-value terrorism increases with resources available to terrorists and changes with other parameters. The model is used to consider how supreme-value terror can be fought. Solutions include decentralization and isolation of terrorists from free society, including through selective immigration. Because the supreme values contradict the values of a free society, the spiritual fight is crucial, which requires preventing domestic dissemination of the supreme values by controlling the education process. The solutions are difficult for a free society.

National Immigration Health Policy

Canada has a long history of welcoming immigrants and a longstanding immigration policy framework. The historic principles that govern immigration selection and processing also include regulatory policies in the area of health. Based on historical principles that pre-date Confederation, Canadian immigration health policy has remained relatively constant. Policies are based on the identification of specific individuals and the exclusion, if appropriate, of the affected individuals - an approach that continues today. During the past three decades, however, evolutionary changes in the patterns, volume and demography of immigration have created situations that may necessitate changes to existing policy frameworks. This paper reviews current immigration health policies and practices in Canada, describes the nature and impact of existing challenges, and proposes some alternatives for future consideration.

Supreme values as the basis for terror

Supreme values, being absolutely true to believers, have to be preferred to all else, and can require acts of terror in which terrorists are willing to take the lives of others and also give up their own lives to further the sought objectives. It is therefore difficult to prevent terrorism based on supreme values. A model shows how supreme-value terrorism increases with resources available to terrorists and changes with other parameters. The model is used to consider how supreme-value terror can be fought. Solutions include decentralization and isolation of terrorists from free society, including through selective immigration. Because the supreme values contradict the values of a free society, the spiritual fight is crucial, which requires preventing domestic dissemination of the supreme values by controlling the education process. The solutions are difficult for a free society.

A political economy approach to understanding the economic incorporation of Chinese sub-ethnic groups

This paper outlines the economic experiences of Toronto’s Chinese, 80% of whom are immigrants mostly arriving in the last two decades. Based on the 1996 census data, labour market participation and economic performance of various. Chinese sub-groups were compared. The findings contribute to an understanding of how selective immigration policies and world geopolitical changes can account for differences in economic adaptation and integration of sub-ethnic groups.

Language Skills and Immigrant Adjustment: What Immigration Policy Can Do!

This study provides an account of the dynamics of the dominant language adjustment process among immigrants in Australia using the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia, which comprises two cohorts of immigrants that arrived in Australia around five years apart. There are two special features of these data that provide the framework for analysis. First, the visa class under which the immigrants entered Australia is known from administrative records. Second, between the two surveys, some visa classes, but not others, were affected by changes in government policy relating to the role of English language skills in immigrant selection. A difference between differences approach is used to isolate the impacts of these policy changes, and thus enable an assessment of what immigrant selection policy can do in this area. It is found that visa category, educational attainment and age at migration impact on immigrant's language skills. The increased English Proficiency requirement for the Independent and Skilled-Australian Sponsored categories appears to have been successful in raising the English language proficiency of these immigrants.

Selection Policy and the Labour Market Outcomes of New Immigrants

Many countries are placing a greater emphasis on productive skills in the immigrant selection policies as a way of achieving national objectives regarding immigration. These changes stem primarily from the belief that skill-based immigrants do better in some sense and provide greater economic benefits than immigrants admitted on the basis of their family relationships. This paper takes advantage of a change in Australian selection policy in the 1990s to assess the extent to which selection policy can facilitate employment outcomes for new arrivals over the medium run. The results indicate that the increased emphasis on productive skills in the selection process led to striking differences in the human capital endowments of new immigrants. These improvements in human capital in turn completely explain the higher participation rates amongst immigrants arriving in Australia at the end of the 1990s. Moreover, approximately half of the fall in men's unemployment rates also stems from increases in productive skills, though the substantial decline in women's unemployment rates are driven solely by changes in the returns to skills rather than skill levels themselves. Overall, these results indicate that there is a large potential for selection policy to influence immigrant outcomes not just immediately after migration but also in the medium run. At the same time, it is also clear that income-support policy and the overall state of the Australian labour market also had a hand in improving the labour market position of new arrivals.

International Migration in the Long-Run: Positive Selection, Negative Selection and Policy

Most labor scarce overseas countries moved decisively to restrict their immigration during the first third of the 20th century. This autarchic retreat from unrestricted and even publicly-subsidized immigration in the first global century before World War I to the quotas and bans introduced afterwards was the result of a combination of factors: public hostility towards new immigrants of lower quality public assessment of the impact of those immigrants on a deteriorating labor market, political participation of those impacted, and, as a triggering mechanism, the sudden shocks to the labor market delivered by the 1890s depression, the Great War, postwar adjustment and the great depression. The paper documents the secular drift from very positive to much more negative immigrant selection which took place in the first global century after 1820 and in the second global century after 1950, and seeks explanations for it. It then explores the political economy of immigrant restriction in the past and seeks historical lessons for the present.

Institutional Structure and Immigrant Integration: A Comparative Study of Immigrants’ Labor Market Attainment in Canada and Israel

The present study focuses on the incorporation of immigrants from the former Soviet Union in two receiving societies, Israel and Canada, during the first half of the 1990s. Both countries conducted national censuses in 1995 (Israel) and 1996 (Canada), making it possible to identify a large enough sample of immigrants and provide information on their demographic characteristics and their labor market activity. While both Canada and Israel are immigrant societies, their institutional contexts of immigrant reception differ considerably. Israel maintains no economic selection of the Jewish immigrants and provides substantial support for newcomers, who are viewed as a returning Diaspora. Canada employs multiple criteria for selecting immigrants, and the immigrants’ social and economic incorporation is patterned primarily by market forces. The analysis first examines the characteristics of immigrants who arrived in the two countries and evaluates the extent of selectivity. Consistent with our hypotheses, Russian immigrants to Canada were more immediately suitable for the labor market, but experienced greater difficulty finding and maintaining employment. Nevertheless, immigrants to Canada attained higher-status occupations and higher earnings than their compatriots in Israel did, although the Israeli labor market was more likely to reward their investments in education.

Entry Class and the Earnings Attainment of Immigrants to Canada, 1980-1995

An important set of theoretical and policy questions revolves around the comparative success in the Canadian labour market of immigrants entering the country as independent immigrants under the point system, through family reunification programs, or as refugees. I estimate models predicting log earnings from the entry class composition of each entry cohort by country of birth and its interaction with years since arrival controlling for other characteristics known to be related to earnings attainment using data from Citizenship and Immigration Canada's Landing Information Data System (LIDS) for 1980 to 1995 merged with the 1996 Census of Canada Public Use Microdata File. While the point system used to screen immigrants to Canada for skills and labour market suitability does indeed select immigrants who have higher earnings upon arrival than those who are not screened, over time the earnings of the two groups converge after human capital differences are taken into account. In a comparison of the earnings of the refugee class to those of all other classes, the results here also indicate convergence net of human capital differences. These patterns are observed for both men and women.

Public policy and the labor market adjustment of new immigrants to Australia

Two separate cohorts of immigrants to Australia are compared in order to assess the potential role of immigrant selection criteria, labor market conditions, and income-support policy in facilitating the labor market adjustment of new arrivals. Although these two cohorts entered Australia only five years apart, their initial labor market outcomes varied dramatically. The results indicate that changes in immigration policy may have led to increased human capital endowments that in turn resulted in higher participation rates and reduced unemployment. At the same time, improvement in Australian labor market conditions and changes in income.support policy over the 1990s 2014 which most likely altered the returns to human capital 2014 were probably instrumental in reinforcing the effects of tighter immigrant selection criteria. As much as half of the fall in unemployment rates among women and one third the decline among men appears to have occurred as the result of changes in the returns to demographic and human capital characteristics.

Selective Immigration and Ethnic Economic Achievement: Japanese Americans before World War II

This article examines the determinants of Japanese immigrant economic achievement in the continental United States before World War II. Japanese immigrants to the United States were a select group in terms of their occupational background and education relative to the Japanese population as a whole because of the restrictions imposed on Japanese immigration by both the Japanese and U.S. governments. Furthermore, the selective nature of Japanese immigration contributed to the economic achievement of Japanese Americans before World War II, when their occupational position underwent a dramatic improvement. This finding differs from the standard cultural explanation of ethnic economic achievement.

Best Practices to Reduce Migration Pressures

Are there best practices to foster economic development, reduce population growth, and protect the environment in source countries of unauthorized migration, in a manner that reduces emigration pressures and redirects migration towards legal channels? This paper outlines cooperative actions that can be undertaken by both source and receiving countries to better manage the movements of people over national borders.There are two broad approaches to foster wanted migration and to reduce unwanted migration. First, maximize migration’s payoffs by ensuring that the 3 Rs of recruitment, remittances, and returns foster economic and job growth in emigration areas. Second, make emigration unnecessary by adapting trade, investment and aid policies, and programmes that accelerate economic development and thus make it unnecessary for people to emigrate for jobs and wages.Most of the changes needed for stay–at–home development must occur in emigration areas, but immigration areas can cooperate in the management of immigration, guest workers, and students, as well as in promoting freer trade and investment, and in targeting aid funds. In a globalizing world, selective immigration policies may have important development impacts, as with immigration country policies toward students, and workers in particular occupations, such as nurses and computer programmers, as well as with mutual recognition of occupational licenses and professional credentials. Trade policies affecting migration are also important, such as trade in services and laws regulating contracts between firms in different countries that allow the entry of lower wage workers as part of the contract. opening channels for legal migration can deter irregular migration.

East Asian and European entrepreneur immigrants in British Columbia, Canada: post-migration conduct and pre-migration context

This paper addresses the limitations of theoretical models of immigrant and ethnic entrepreneurship by observing that the pre- and post-migration experiences of business owners who entered Canada through the business immigration programme in the 1980s and 1990s were not, as these models assume, from the working class but members from the entrepreneur class. The orientation of that programme toward bolstering investments in provincial manufacturing sectors does not, however, coincide with business immigrants' accumulation strategies. Through an examination of two groups of immigrant manufacturers, East Asians and Europeans, the paper concludes that the post-migration accumulation strategies of each group differ because their pre-migration experiences with politico-institutional processes and structural developments in the (newly industrialising) economies of the Asia-Pacific and the (post-industrialising) Euro-American region differ. Although the 'new' East Asian and 'new' European immigrants face the same immigration selection process and the same opportunity structures in setting up a variety of light manufacturing rms in Canada, they differ substantially in their selection of a business language, in the continuation of their line of business, in their acquisition of production skills, in their reliance on product designs by others, and in their multicultural and co-ethnic employment practices.

East Asian and European entrepreneur immigrants in British Columbia, Canada: Post-migration conduct and pre-migration context

This paper addresses the limitations of theoretical models of immigrant and ethnic entrepreneurship by observing that the pre- and post-migration experiences of business owners who entered Canada through the business immigration programme in the 1980s and 1990s were not, as these models assume, from the working class but members from the entrepreneur class. The orientation of that programme toward bolstering investments in provincial manufacturing sectors does not, however, coincide with business immigrants' accumulation strategies. Through an examination of two groups of immigrant manufacturers, East Asians and Europeans, the paper concludes that the post-migration accumulation strategies of each group differ because their pre-migration experiences with politico-institutional processes and structural developments in the (newly industrialising) economies of the Asia-Pacific and the (post-industrialising) Euro-American region differ. Although the 'new' East Asian and 'new' European immigrants face the same immigration selection process and the same opportunity structures in setting up a variety of light manufacturing rms in Canada, they differ substantially in their selection of a business language, in the continuation of their line of business, in their acquisition of production skills, in their reliance on product designs by others, and in their multicultural and co-ethnic employment practices.

The Holocaust, the Aborigines, and the bureaucracy of destruction: An Australian dimension of genocide

The decade of the 1930s saw the beginning of a major reassessment of where the Commonwealth of Australia saw itself in relation to the rest of the world. The Statute of Westminster 1931, which effectively rescinded any remaining vestiges of British parliamentary control over the governments of the Dominions, provided Australia with the opportunity to go its own way on matters of foreign affairs at precisely the moment when freedom of movement was needed in view of international developments. As things turned out, the Australians did not ratify the Statute of Westminster until 1942, when the nation was imperiled and Britain was not in a position to assist in the Commonwealth’s defense. In the intervening decade, the Australians clung to the British lead in almost everything, notwithstanding an oft-expressed British preference that the great Dominion would develop its own policies based around its own strategic interests. In one area only, it appeared, would Australia do so, and this would have enormous repercussions for those whose lives it touched. In matters of population policy, the Australians exercised an almost fanatical independence, mixing legislation with administration for the purpose of determining which overseas nationalities would have the privilege of contributing to the future population of the country. For Jews seeking to e ee Nazi Germany or any of the anti-Semitic countries of Eastern Europe this would have devastating results. But a selective immigration program formed only a part of the approach to building a “pure” population of blond-haired, blue-eyed Anglo-Australians. A second initiative was the development of what can only be described as a genocidal policy with regard to mixed-descent Aborigines, as this article will contend. As a way into this topic, we can juxtapose two quotes, taken from statements made by Australian ofe cials of the Department of the Interior in the 1930s. The e rst is from 1933: