Skills, Immigration and Selective Policies

This paper examines the decision process that leads destination countries to introduce selective immigration policies based on skill requirements. We show that in absence of policy implementation costs, destination countries’ preferences are polarized between complete openness and complete closure; however, this result changes if we take into account for policy implementation costs. In presence of enforcement costs, selective immigration policies consist in positive quotas both for unskilled and skilled workers; this result realistically fits the current scenario. We also show that the resulting policy depends on the capital endowment of the median voter: the richer, the less restrictive the immigration policy.