The economic effects of illegal migration under the minimum wage policy of a source country

This research note extends Bond and Chen's analysis of illegal migration by assuming that the source country is a developing country in which there is a minimum wage policy. We examine how the minimum wage of the source country and enforcement by the host affect factor prices, migration, unemployment and economic welfare. We find that the enforcement effect is clear and intuitive, but the qualitative effect of the minimum wage depends on the wage elasticity of employment in the source country. Copyright (c) 2007 the author(s). Journal compilation (c) 2007 RSAI.