ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that immigration control is very limited in its capacity to affect immigrant entry-level earnings. Immigration controls basically represent government intervention in a market-driven process of international labor mobility. Increased immigration control not only represents a political liability and is unlikely to have a major effect, it also runs counter to the processes of progressively more open markets and economic change. The policy backlash against immigrant welfare use surfaced first in California, where the large illegal immigration population has created resentment and a perception that immigrants represent a social burden. Global economic competition could be used by affluent and powerful groups within societies as an excuse to promote institutional changes which redistribute wealth in their own direction. Economic development in Europe, and the creation of a European labor market, drastically changed that source for immigration to North America or Australia, not only reducing it, but shifting its emphasis to the more highly skilled.
