Competing for Good Immigrants

Abstract I analyze the competition among different countries for ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ potential immigrants, using both an immigration quota and a level of (imperfect) ‘scrutiny’ that would-be immigrants face. Scrutiny imposes costs on immigrants and therefore makes it less attractive to immigrate. The number of applying undesirable immigrants increases in immigration quota and decreases in the level of scrutiny. In contrast, the number of desirable applicants can go in either direction as scrutiny increases and is independent of the immigration quota, because an increase in the immigration quota is completely crowded out by more applications by undesirable immigrants.