ABSTRACT
Writing about the economic consequences of immigration in receiving countries from the standpoint of a labor economist, Borjas (1995) speaks of a resulting “immigration surplus” to underline that the benefits created by immigration usually outweigh any losses for natives in the receiving country. At the same time he notes that the condition for this gain to materialize is that the wages of natives diminish, which means that gainful immigration will generate distributional conflicts. Under most scenarios the efficiency gains are small relative to the redistribution of income caused by immigration. Yet, given the overall gains and the means at the disposals of the state to redistribute income, on economic grounds, at least, one might be inclined to expect a more positive attitude towards immigration than those expressed in recent surveys (see below). Bhagwati (1991), also writing from the point of view of receiving countries, but from the standpoint of a trade economist, notes that both politicians and economists in the European Union (EU) and the US support free trade while advocating restrictions on migrations, and argues that such attitudes can only be the consequence of being inconsistent in the application of utilitarian logic which would lead to the advocacy of the free immigration solution.
