Korea’s working population has been decreasing. Should Korea embrace more immigration to ensure sustainable growth?

Korea’s working population has been decreasing. Should Korea embrace more immigration to ensure sustainable growth?

Immigration being one of the most contentious issues in this increasingly globalized world,

Immigration law and its enforcement are controversial and highly debated topics.

The primary focus of this thesis is to analyze whether state and local police have the legal power to enforce immigration laws that have been the jurisdiction of the Federal Government for decades.

The thesis will analyze the ramifications of allowing state police to engage in activities which historically have been limited to the federal law enforcement. There are several opposing views on this issue because of the many aspects that are involved in the enforcement of complex immigration laws. First, the question of who ultimately has the power to enforce immigration law will be addressed. Secondly, an overview of recently enacted legislation at the state level will be explained. Lastly, the humanitarian aspects surrounding this issue will be addressed. These issues include racial profiling, detention facilities, and local law enforcement’s lack of proper training.

Economic growth is a primary goal for all countries as it is usually associated with a higher standard of living and quality of life for citizens. Because growth is so important, especially in light of the recent recessions around the world, it is important also to consider ways to achieve growth. One such way is through migration. Migration can increase growth in both receiving countries (the countries net labor moves to) and home countries (the countries net labor moves from). In general, receiving countries are developed countries – those countries with relatively high incomes (real GDPs), a high level of technology and industrialization, and also a relatively larger percent of people living in cities as opposed to rural areas. Home countries are generally developing countries – basically the opposite of developed countries, with relatively low incomes, a lower level of technology and industrialization, and a relatively large percentage of workers in agricultural fields and in rural areas.

There is a downward sloping demand for labor and an upward sloping supply.

As net migration increases, the quantity of labor increases, which can be beneficial for economic growth. It is important to note though, that labor only increases output if it is employed. So labor migration into a region with no available jobs will not yield growth unless new jobs are created. Optimal conditions for a country to accept inward labor migration then, are an abundance of unfilled jobs; while optimal conditions for a country to promote outward labor migration are high unemployment levels. And countries in general hold native-held jobs as better than migrant-held jobs due to the nature of elections.

Most migrant laborers send remittances back to their respective home countries in the form of some of their wages. These remittances are then spent in the home countries, increasing consumption spending in those countries and therefore increasing real GDP. This causes growth so long as the remittance sent back to the home country is higher than the wage that would have been earned in the home country. If unemployment is very high in the home country it is foreseeable that the potential wage in the home country would have been zero for some migrants, meaning that all of the remittance is added to the real GDP of the home country.

In this globalized world, immigration patterns are neither bound by geographical distances between the home and host countries nor is any history of earlier immigration between the countries needed. The prospective migrants can migrate to their preferred destination countries with relative ease and fewer restrictions. Consequently, unlike most other eras of human history, immigrants to the West nowadays originate from different parts of the world.

They, however, add that these job losses cause a job upgrade for the natives, i.e. higher immigration pushes native workers to move to jobs requiring a relatively higher level of complexity. Such jobs are generally high-paying and high-skilled and thus, immigration is interpreted to have a positive externality for the native workers.

Next the thesis ventures into understanding the determinants of immigrants’ socio-economic assimilation in the host environment. Immigrants’ socio-economic assimilation in the host country matters as it has been shown to be important for their general wellbeing.

Immigrants’ economic characteristics (income and employment), a number of noneconomic characteristics play a key role in their subjective wellbeing. These non-economic factors include being married, the host country’s language proficiency and their assimilation of the host-identity. They further show that the relevance of noneconomic determinants of subjective wellbeing is crucial for immigrants with a long stay in the host country and for second-generation immigrants. In other words, immigrants are shown to achieve higher subjective wellbeing if they smoothly assimilate economic as well as noneconomic characteristics as they spend more time in the host environment.

For the theoretical reasoning of the expected results,

In a recent survey, immigration ranked second, after unemployment, among a list of the 14 most important issues faced by European countries (Eurobarometer 87, 2017).

An important theoretical reference point for much of the empirical work on attitudes toward immigration is…

Note that since the immigrant share of a country’s population is endogenous.

The econometrically appropriate way to address the endogeneity of immigration is through the use of instrumental variables.

A downside to this approach is that it precludes directly examining the effect of culture on concerns over immigration, as our cultural variables are perfectly collinear with the country fixed effects. Instead, we consider specifications in which national culture is interacted with the immigrant population share, which allows us to address how culture affects the presence or strength of salience effects.

Our results, presented in Table 2.5, indicate that national culture plays a significant role in shaping concerns over immigration and suggest significant international differences in the sensitivity of these concerns to the immigrant share of the population. In particular, we find that economic concerns over immigration are lower for countries with greater religious diversity and more individualistic cultures.

This literature often focuses on the impact of immigration on natives and sidelines or many times completely ignores the multifaceted effects that the new immigration flows can have on existing immigrants.

One way to conceptualize the economic effects of the ERC is to consider its impact on the labor demand side of the economy. Upon arrival asylum seekers were granted cash allowances to cover monthly expenses while rent and health insurance were covered by the state.

It is possible that the crisis has a causal implication independent of its economic and social impacts for the subjective well-being of existing T-MENA immigrants.93 For example, first, it may be that the existing TMENA immigrants observe an improved social and family life due to the arrival of culturally similar immigrants to Germany. Their arrival may also be associated with improved access to culturally similar goods that the newly opened businesses offer (e.g. groceries, restaurants, etc.). Additionally, increase in population may improve the quality of family and social life by simply increased opportunity to establish new social networks (friends, family, etc.). On the contrary, there can also be negative externalities for the existing T-MENA immigrants.

Immigration has become one of the most discussed topics of migration because of the fear that natives often experience when foreign labor comes and competes with them on the labor market. There are still controversies about the effects of immigration on the unemployment rate of the host country and even the simplest theoretical models can’t give a clear answer to this problem.

The labor force should be grouped according to skill characteristics, where further effects are recognized from years of schooling and work experience on the labor market (Borjas, 2002).

Eurobarometer 87 (2017). “Public Opinion in the European Union”: http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDetail/instruments/S TANDARD/surveyKy/2142

Borjas, G.J. (2002) The Labor Demand Curve Is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(4), pp. 1335 – 1374

OECD Migration policy pdf