ABSTRACT
Classical free trade theory assumed that goods could often readily be traded across national borders but that the factors of production employed to produce those goods (land, capital and labour) were fixed and immobile. In the contemporary world, largely due to technological changes, this has become dramatically untrue of capital, and much less true of labour. However, the frequent political resistance to international mobility of goods is often dramatically intensified in the case of the international mobility of people. Here we move from the domain of international trade policy to the domain of immigration policy. The most critical linkage between the two relates to international trade in services, especially services which require physical proximity between service supplier and service user. As international trade in services of various kinds continues to grow, the line between trade in services and migration of people becomes increasingly blurred.2 Of the economic integration regimes reviewed in this book, only the EU to date has committed itself to free internal movement of people, subject to substantial efforts at harmonization of minimum professional and vocational qualifications and without any automatic entitlement to national citizenship of Member States. NAFTA (Chapter 16) contains a much more limited set of provisions for issuance of temporary entry visas for business, professional and technical personnel in connection with international business activities.
