How do US visa policies affect unauthorized immigration?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kovak, Brian K.; Lessem, Rebecca
• 署名单位: Carnegie Mellon University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Carnegie Mellon University; Carnegie Mellon University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2020.03.001
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 92-108
• 关键词: Unauthorized immigration; Mexico; Visa policy

摘要

How would increasing the number of visas available to potential migrants 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 unauthorized immigration, but may be ineffective given that most potential Mexican migrants have an extremely low probability of ever being able to legally move to the U.S. We develop a dynamic discrete location choice model, which we estimate using data from the Mexican Migration Project, and consider various counterfactual policies that vary the intensity of enforcement and access to work visas. We find that legal entry bans for deported individuals are ineffective at current rates of legal immigration, but that increased legalization rates would amplify the deterrent effects of deportation. We also show that a temporary work visa program would yield similar deterrent effects as an increase in permanent legalization without resulting in very large increases in the total stock of migrants residing in the U.S. These findings have important implications for structuring future immigration reforms. (c) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)