Very few labor-based pathways for regular migration are available for people in Northern Central America, often called the 'Northern Triangle' of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. This note briefly summarizes the state of labor-based migration channels in the region. It then argues that...

Irregular migration to Europe through the sea, though risky, remains one of the most popular migration options for many Sub-Saharan Africans even after the pandemic crisis. This study examines the determinants of irregular migration decisions using an incentivized lab-in-the field experiment in...

As of 2021, 16 U.S. States and the District of Columbia have implemented laws allowing undocumented migrants to acquire a driver's license. In this paper, I hypothesize that lower barriers to work caused by the ability to obtain driving licenses can affect undocumented migrants' fertility...

This paper establishes a new fact about immigration policies: legalization has long-term effects on formal employment of undocumented immigrants and their assimilation. We exploit the broad amnesty enacted in Italy in 2002 together with rich survey data collected in 2011 on a representative...

This paper explores the impact of refugees on the size of the underground economy in 28 European Union countries over the period from 1998 to 2017. It applies a nonlinear methodology by employing dynamic panel threshold estimations. The main findings uncover a nonlinear connection between...

This paper examines the effects of a government regularization program offered to half a million Venezuelan refugees in Colombia. For this purpose, 2,232 surveys of refugee families were collected and used to compare refugees who arrived in Colombia around a specified eligibility date in 2018....

In this paper, we examine the impact of government enforcement of the U.S.-Mexican border on wages in the border regions of the United States and Mexico. The U.S. Border Patrol polices U.S. boundaries, seeking to apprehend any individual attempting to enter the United States illegally. These...

We examine how increasing the number of visas available to potential migrants would affect unauthorized immigration from Mexico to the U.S. Current U.S. policy bans people who are deported from receiving legal status for a period of time. This policy aims to serve as an additional deterrent to...

The 2011 Arab Spring marked the opening of the Central Mediterranean Route for irregular border-crossings between Libya and Italy, which produced heterogeneous reductions of bilateral smuggling distances between African-European country pairs. We exploit this source of spatial and temporal...

This paper analyses the relationship between regular and irregular migration taking into account the migration network effect and the network creation mechanism. We assume that migrants can obtain a high payoff only if a critical mass of migrants is reached in the destination country. If...

With the background of the Syrian crisis, irregular migration, and authoritarianism - strengthened by the collapse of the Peace Process of the Turkish state with the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PKK) in 2015 and the 2016 coup attempt - the Turkish government has amended the Citizenship Law,...

Irregularly staying migrants are more likely to face material deprivation, instability and are more vulnerable to exploitation and crime than legal residents (FRA, 2011). Ultimately, they may face deportation to their country of origin. The fear of detection and deportation can lead to...

Policy projections and recent research suggest that large numbers of irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa will continue to attempt to make their way to Europe over the next few decades. In response, European countries have made and continue to make significant investments in information...

Conditional Cash Transfers are increasingly used by development aid agencies to reduce the incentives for migration from low-income countries. The evidence to date suggests that such transfers typically increase the rate of migration when they are conditional on investment, such as investment in...

Border enforcement of immigration laws raises the costs of illegal immigration, while interior enforcement also lowers its benefits. Used together, border and interior enforcement therefore reduce the net benefits of illegal immigration and should lower the probability that an individual will...

This paper investigates the effect of U.S. border enforcement on the net flow of Mexican undocumented migration. It shows how this effect is theoretically ambiguous, given that increases in border controls deter prospective migrants from crossing the border illegally, but lengthen the duration...

We use a version of the Meade model to consider the effects of interdependent import tariffs in the presence illegal immigration. First, we consider the small union case and derive the Nash tariff equilibrium for two potential members of a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA). We analyze...

A number of developed countries have implemented guest-worker programs in recent decades. Its basic feature is the temporary presence of the foreign guest-workers. The problem with such programs is that there is little to prevent these guest-workers from entering the illegal job market and...

This paper analyzes how enforcement along the U.S.-Mexican border has affected the market for migrant smugglers. Using a unique dataset that links border crossing histories from illegal Mexican migrants to aggregate enforcement and punishment statistics, we find that the effect of enforcement on...

We introduce financial constraints in a theoretical analysis of illegal immigration. Intermediaries finance the migration costs of wealth-constrained migrants, who enter temporary servitude contracts to pay back the debt. These debt/labor contracts are more easily enforceable in the illegal than...

This paper presents a first attempt at understanding some of the many issues involved in the granting of an amnesty to illegal immigrants. We consider government behavior with respect to allocations on limiting infiltration (border control) and apprehending infiltrators (internal control) and...

This paper looks at the situation of legal immigrants who employ illegal immigrants to provide them with various services. This enables the legal immigrants to allocate more time to other work, thereby increasing their earnings. Illegal immigrants employed by legal immigrants may specialize in...

The debate on the immigration policies in OECD countries has turned its attention towards illegal migrants. Given that migration flows are determined by immigration laws, the probability of potential detection, penalties for unauthorised migrants and their employers, and on income differences...

Many countries are experiencing increasing inflows of immigrant students. This raises concerns that having a large share of students for whom the host country language is not their first language may have detrimental effects on the educational outcomes of native children. However, the evidence...

This paper examines the labor market effects of ending the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for undocumented immigrants in the United States. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 required that tax filers have a valid Social Security number to claim the EITC, thus disqualifying undocumented immigrants...

Irregular migrants are commonly supported financially by friends or family; as migration from a society becomes common, a ‘culture of migration’ may emerge in communities of origin which drives further migration. Many people who migrate irregularly use the services of smugglers or agents,...

In this paper, I selectively review recent literature on illegal migration from Mexico to the United States. I begin by discussing methods for estimating stocks and flows of illegal migrants. While there is uncertainty about the size of the unauthorized population, new data sources make it...

Americans believe that undocumented immigrants are exploiting the United States' economy. The widespread belief is that illegal aliens cost more in government services than they contribute to the economy. This belief is undeniably false. [E]very empirical study of illegals' economic impact...

A critical element of any future immigration reform will be the legalization of illegal immigrants. Previous immigration reform proposals have failed, largely because policymakers disagreed over whether and how to legalize illegal immigrants. Future immigration reform proposals must be different...

Canonical models of migration feature border enforcement as a strategy to contain undocumented immigration by effectively exacting a mobility cost. This paper revisits the role of border enforcement policy in a task-based model of the labor market where employers simultaneously hire circular...

This paper develops a framework for estimating previous illegal experience among annual cohorts of new legal immigrants to the United States - using public-use administrative microdata alone, survey data alone, and the two jointly - and provides estimates for the FY 1996 cohort of new...

This paper analyzes the different trading networks, the flux of merchandise, and the actors involved in the act of crossing goods through the United States-Mexico border, particularly in the Tijuana-San Diego region. It argues that the line dividing both countries works differently depending on...

I present here selected articles that originated from the Simposio de antropología "entre lo legal y lo illegal" in Monterrey, Mexico, November 2019. These articles focus on Latin American borders: the U.S.-Mexico border, the Brazil-Paraguay border, and the Argentina-Bolivia border. These Latin...

In this paper, we examine the correlation between sectoral shocks and border enforcement in the United States. Enforcement of national borders is the main policy instrument the U.S. government uses to combat illegal immigration. The motivation for the exercise is to see whether border...

This chapter investigates the impact of the imposition of sanctions for employing illegal migrants on the welfare of native laborers. In response to such sanctions, managers in a firm may be reassigned from the supervision of production to the verification of the legality of the firm's labor...

This discussion paper investigates the impact of the imposition of sanctions for employing illegal migrants on the welfare of native laborers. In response to such sanctions, managers in a firm may be reassigned from the supervision of production to the verification of the legality of the firm's...

We explore whether fear of apprehension affects immigrants' labor market engagement by examining how ICE removals due to immigration violations and increased awareness of immigration raids impact their labor market outcomes. We find that ICE deportations are associated with reductions in the...