要旨

Increasing economic integration between countries has been accompanied by a process of integration and harmonization of common and uniform rules in many policy areas. Immigration policies have been largely untouched by this process, in fact also in area of the world 窶錀 such as the European Union 窶錀 where a high degree of policy centralization and integration has taken place, countries still preserve full autonomy on deciding who, how many and under which conditions third-country individuals might cross their border in order to live and work. The aim of this paper is to investigate some of the welfare consequences associated to the existence of heterogeneous and uncoordinated immigration policy in an interconnected world. We build a simple three country model where two rich countries with different immigration policies form a federation and receive immigrants from a third developing country. We show the existence of strong immigration policy externalities; a more restrictive immigration policy in one country might reduce or increase welfare in the other country. In addition we consider the effects of economic integration within the federation in the form of free mobility of native workers. We show that labor market integration might lead to loose-loose situations in case of large displacement of immigration from the third country.