ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors discuss the shortcomings of the data that record international migration flows and their implications for their study. They examines questions relevant to several important issues: first, the identification of dominant migratory flow patterns, and how these patterns depend importantly on the motivation for migration; second, a descriptive profile of the demographic and labor-force characteristics of migrants. The authors focus on other issues that may be of special interest to migration within the Pacific Basin. They provide a framework for making sense of migration within the region, and not to show the effects of the 1965 law changes, the latter intent must also be adopted because it is those changes that have brought closer to the theoretical paradigm of laissez faire. The authors present a comparison of immigration to the United States before and after the changes allows speculation about the possible consequences of restructuring other, currently strict, immigration policies.
