City Research Online

Abstract

We study how temporary visa schemes can be designed to drive smugglers out of business while meeting labor market needs in host countries. After discussing their compatibility with a large range of policy objectives, we show how combining internal and external controls with a regulated market for temporary visas alleviates the policy trade-off between migration control and ending human smuggling. We use information on irregular migration from Senegal to Spain and the Democratic Republic of Congo to South Africa to calibrate the “eviction” prices of visas for these two routes, which are set to throttle smuggling activities. Our results highlight important constraints for governments seeking to prevent temporary workers from overstaying, especially on south-north routes such as Senegal to Spain. They suggest combining a regulated market for visas with tighter sanctions against employers of undocumented workers as a way forward.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher Keywords:	immigration, human smuggling, market structure, legalization
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs > Economics
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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