Unlocking The Benefits of Irregular Immigration

UNLOCKING
THE BENEFITS OF IRREGULAR IMMIGRATION

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SENDING, RECEIVING AND TRANSIT STATES
NICHOLAS KANG
UNLOCKING
THE BENEFITS OF IRREGULAR IMMIGRATION
NICHOLAS KANG
UNLOCKING THE BENEFITS OF IRREGULAR IMMIGRATION:

AUTHOR
Nicholas Kang
PUBLISHER
Group 484,
Pukovnika Bacia 3
11000 Belgrade
ISSUER
Vladimir Petronijevi
DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Saa orevi
BELGRADE, 2014
REPORT IN BRIEF
OVERVIEW
For the past several decades, regular and irregular migrations have been portrayed for their
negative economic, social, and geopolitical impacts on states. This whitepaper seeks to provide insight on how irregular migrants interact with different policies to result in various social,
economic, geopolitical outcomes for receiving, sending, and transit states, and suggest how
policymakers should seek to better develop and assess immigration policies to maximize these
positive impacts. The intention of this broader study is to provide a holistic understanding of
the general impacts of irregular migrant movements in order to emphasize the importance
of the complexity of irregular migrant movements, and how a more multidisciplinary understanding of these movements is needed to maximize the economic, social, and geopolitical
benefits of irregular migrants.
The white paper is delivered in four sections. The first section provides an introduction to the
legal, political, and social context of irregular migrants and the general overview and significance of their migration paths. The second section draws on theory and literature on the motivation of migrants, a field that is often oversimplified when translated into policy decisions,
and often responsible for many undesired consequences of seemingly well-intentioned policy
decisions. The third section is a general analysis of the economic, social, and geopolitical
impact of irregular migration, intended to introduce the wide range of impact that irregular
migrants can have on a state. The final section of this whitepaper looks at three case studies,
isolating various policy decisions and how those policy decisions adequately or inadequately
met the interests of the various stakeholders: the private, the public, the irregular migrants,
and the geopolitical region.
Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

A Comparative Study of Sending, Receiving and Transit States
GENERAL FINDINGS
The investigation of the impact of irregular migrants on sending, receiving, and transit states
exposes the nuances of irregular migration and the challenges that policymakers face when
trying to develop effective immigration policy. But through a study on past research on migrant motivations and an understanding on how various policies and regional pressures can
influence the social, economic, and geopolitical impact of irregular migrants, we can begin to
see through these nuances, and reframe questions of irregular migration on a new series of
assumptions. The first and most important of these assumptions is that migrant motivation
not only varies from migration wave to migration wave, but by individual to individual. As a result, migrant motivations are difficult to identify and therefore target as policymakers leading
to a level inevitability in not being able to fully manage migrant movements. For this reason
the source of large irregular migrant populations is not the fault of the migrants but rather the
fault of insufficient policy design.
Provided that the issue is now one of policy design, policymakers now bear the responsibility
to find ways to better manage irregular migrations while simultaneously finding ways to maximize the benefits that can be extracted with the movements that cannot be managed.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES TO DEVELOPING REALISTIC IMMIGRATION POLICIES

Building from this assumption of the inevitability of irregular migrations, we conclude with
three guiding principles designed to help policymakers think more broadly about the phenomenon of irregular migration and the widespread impact, both positive and negative, that
their policy decisions can have. The three guiding principles are as follows:
Principle 1: Irregular migrant movements need to be respected as phenomena that
demand an understanding and respect of the complex psychological, social, emotional,
and economic motivations of individual migrants.
Principle 2: Policies and policy mechanisms need to be developed to meet the complex
motivations of irregular migrants and maximize the impact they can bring to sending
and receiving states.
Principle 3: Trends of immigrant labour markets should serve as an important indicator
for long-term and short-term policy development. This includes regularization
mechanisms and programs as well as comprehensive immigration reform since it
provides critical insight into the motivations behind present day migration and therefore
insight into the development of more effective policy.

Under the first two guiding principles migration, it is necessary that irregular migrations are
assessed by holistically, both in regards of the migrants motivations and their respective impact. Migrant motivations should be assessed and considered as a system of highly complex
motivating factors and should take into account both the economic and socio-political pushand pull-factors (Principle 1). This holistic analysis provides a better foundation to develop immigration policies that could help reduce some unwanted irregular migrant flows. The holistic
understanding of the impact of irregular migrants, investigating the prospective economic,
social, or geopolitical impact irregular migrant movements and policies, not only results in
more effective advocacy, but it will also help policymakers define the who, how and why of
the immigrants they want to encourage and discourage from migrating (Principle 2).
The fact that natural economic forces often drive irregular migrations, irregular migrations can
and should be used as an indicator for both sending and receiving states and their domestic
gaps in labour supply and demand (Principle 3). In instances that irregular migration does expose gaps in labour markets, policymakers have a window of opportunity to temporarily shift
policies to maximize the benefits of these movements and markets. Temporary worker visas
and regularization schemes are two tools such tools that policymakers can use to take advantage of theses opportunities.
A final note in regard to these guiding principles is that policymakers need to continuously be
adjusting immigration policy to meet the ever-changing needs of migrants and the state. By
relying on the status quo as a strategy of adapting and accepting irregular migrant flows, a
state risks allowing any issues associated with irregular migrants to grow out of control to the
extent that a retroactive response may become too costly for certain stakeholders therefore
freezing any future needs to adjust the policies.
SUMMARY
The first step policymakers need to make is to reframe how they think about what makes immigrants irregular. By doing so, they can then focus migrant irregularity as an indicator of
gaps between current immigration policy mismatching migrant motivations, rather than solely
focusing on migrant motivations. By reframing the issue around the insufficiency of past policies, it allows policymakers to reconstruct the strategies to address irregular migration on a
more realistic understanding of migrant movements.
As a result of shifting the responsibility from the individual to the policy, policymakers are
forced to develop more creative options for legal migration and legal stay, and encouraged to
find new ways to use immigration to stimulate domestic economies, create a cushion of a transient labour force among natives to adjust for fluctuations in unemployment, and backfill aging populations in countries where the natural rate of population growth is turning negative.

But as part of having this realistic understanding of immigrant movements, it is also important
to note and understand the social impact of irregular migrant movements on native populations. Large shifts in the social demographic of any society, whether it is from emigration or
immigration, can lead to a great level of public disturbance as seen in the case studies of the
United States and Greece. However, to react to these disturbances by enacting fear-driven
policies, also evident in both United States and Greece case studies, only leads down a road
of self-fulfilling prophecy. To summarize, the more restrictive policies become and the greater
the challenge it is for migrants to attain and maintain legal status, the more that migrants will
be forced into irregular status, rely on unregulated and potentially criminal means of crossing
borders, and become a greater cost and burden to the receiving country and its native citizens.
Therefore, for immigration policies to be effective they must be accessible, they must include
incentives that align with the interests of the migrants, and they must seek to mitigate the
negative social impact that can arise in receiving and transit states. If the policies can meet
these three requirements, they can and will successfully reduce the number of migrants that
will be breaking the laws, reduce the demand for costly enforcement measures, and maximize
the very economic, social, and geopolitical benefits they bring to all states along the migrant
journey.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 10
PART I: THE CONTEXT OF IRREGULAR MIGRATIONS
11
A Pathway to Irregularity: The Role of States in Making Migrants Irregular
12
Sending, Transit, and Receiving States 11

Conflicting Interests of the Private, the Public and the State
Complexity of the Context
13
14
PART II: UNDERSTANDING THE CORE MOTIVATIONS

AND MECHANISMS OF IRREGULAR MIGRANTS
15
PART III: IMPACT ANALYSIS OF IRREGULAR MIGRATIONS
17
Overview 17
The Economic Impact of Irregular Migrants 19

The Social Impact of Irregular Migrants 25
Geopolitical Impact of Irregular Migrant Movements
28
PART IV: VARIOUS APPROACHES TO HANDLING

IRREGULAR MIGRANTS
30
of Receiving but Not Documenting
31
Case #2: Greece The Challenges of Being a Buffer State
37
Case #3: Poland The Costs and Benefits of a Sending State
44
Case #1: The United States Compounding Effects
CONCLUSION 47

10
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this whitepaper is to provide insight on how irregular migrants interact with
different policies to result in various social, economic, geopolitical outcomes for receiving,
sending, and transit states. The intention of this broader study is to provide a holistic understanding of the general impacts of irregular migrant movements in order to ensure that states
who are and will continue to experience increased migrant flows can shape policy in a way that
maximizes the economic, social, and geopolitical benefits of these movements while minimizing excess costs.
Evidence for this whitepaper will be based on past studies that have done important econometric work to draw correlation and causation between immigrants and development. It is
also necessary that this white paper draw from various theoretical frameworks in order to take
into account the challenges associated with external validity, the nuances of each particular
study, and the unique economic, social and political situations of every state.
This whitepaper will be delivered in four sections. The first section will provide an introduction
to the legal, political, and social context of irregular migrants and the general overview and
significance of their migration paths. The second section will draw from theory and literature
on the motivation of migrants, a field that is often oversimplified when translated into policy
decisions, and often responsible for many undesired consequences of seemingly well-intentioned policy decisions. The third section will be a general overview of the economic, social,
and geopolitical impact of irregular migration, intended to introduce the complexity of the impact that irregular migrants can have on a state while breaking down any predisposed notions
that immigration is always good or always bad for any given state. The final section of this
white paper will look at three case studies, isolating various policy decisions and how those
policy decisions adequately or inadequately met the interests of the various stakeholders: the
private, the public, the irregular migrants, and the geopolitical region.
Together this whitepaper will illustrate the complexity of irregular migrant movements, and
the challenge that policy-makers face in order to meet the needs of all necessary stakeholders.
Further, it will provide a commentary on the impact of a few historical policy decisions that
have led to economic, social, and geopolitical consequences and rewards of the United States,
Greece, and Poland as examples of receiving, transit, and sending states respectively.

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PART I: THE CONTEXT OF IRREGULAR MIGRATIONS

The Migrant Journey
Migration is not a new phenomenon, nor is it one that will cease to exist in the near future. In
fact, global trends of civil war, environmental displacement, and economic disparity continue
to drive new waves of migration around the world seem to suggest quite the contrary. This
never-ending migration is also continuously changing. Migrants are coming from new countries with different motivations, and they are changing where they want to go and finding new
ways of getting there. What has not changed is that these migrations still follow general principles: they still occur in waves, they more often than not involve multiple countries, and many
of the countries who are either transit or receiving states are facing similar challenges. These
migrations continue to burden states with the realities of managing population levels, regulating labour supplies, and upholding human rights principles. As a result they can also have
a real economic, social, and geopolitical costs and benefits depending on how they manage
these flows with various immigration policies.
As this whitepaper will later discuss, the economic, social, and geopolitical costs and benefits
and the policies responsible for them will rely heavily on the natural immigration and emigration forces at play in each state. For the purpose of a broad study on irregular migration, it
makes the most sense to analyse the policies and the policy impact on various states based on
their primary role as a sending, transit, or receiving state.
Sending, Transit, and Receiving States

Sending states are states where migrants start their migration and often their native country.
Sending states are almost always in a worse social, economic, and/or political situation than
receiving states, but do not have to be. For purpose of this research, sending states are simply
any state of emigration regardless of the motivating factors. This emigration can be the result
of conflict that leads to an eventual asylum claim, but it can also be for economic, social, or
political reasons that would not otherwise provide a legal basis for these emigrants to apply
for asylum.1
Transit states are the states migrants will enter and leave in order to get to their intended destination or receiving state. For transit states it is clearer that the benefits are overwhelmingly
overshadowed by the costs. There is little value in having migrants pass through a country
while facing contradicting pressures from sending and receiving states on how to expend
limited resources and shape immigration policy because of readmission agreements, border
security, and human rights obligations. Factors that lead states to become part of a common
route of migration include the inability of the state to monitor their borders effectively, the

Long-Term Immigration Projection Methods: Current Practice and How to Improve
It, Neil Howe and Richard Jackson, Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 2006.
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immigrant friendly policies that provide safe passage through the country, the access to government assistance in the form of food, accommodation, and basic healthcare, or because the
state is the only feasible way for a migrant to reach her destination country. Since a significant
percentage of migrants travel by land or sea, there are often a number of transit states, most of
which become a regular route for migrants to get from the sending state to the receiving state.
Receiving states are the states of final destination. Receiving states, as will be discussed in
greater depth later, are selected for various reasons including family or social ties, and/or
socio-economic opportunity. Not only are receiving states, like transit and sending states,
responsible for upholding the basic human rights of the migrants, but also responsible to their
native citizens and the protection of public safety and national security looking into the longterm.
Policy responses by states to either slow or encourage migration will vary drastically depending on the primary role of the state as a sending, transit, or receiving state. Some countries
choose not to handle irregular migrants at all, allowing many of them to enter and work without legal provisions. Other states have very strict enforcement, and border control in attempt
to reduce irregular entries. Among the reactive approaches, states may execute mass deportations and removals or initiate regularization programs or mechanisms. How different states
shape policies around irregular migration as those just mentioned has led to an eclectic variety
of positive and negative results. The purpose of this whitepaper, therefore, is to sort through
some of these results, and investigate how policy-makers should think about immigration
policy to best harness the economic, social, and geopolitical potential from the natural forces
that drive migration.
A Pathway to Irregularity: The Role of States in Making Migrants Irregular

According to the International Organization of Migration an irregular migrant is defined as a
person who, owing to unauthorized entry, breach of a condition of entry, or the expiry of his or
her visa, lacks legal status in a transit or host country. The definition covers inter alia those persons who have entered a transit or host country lawfully but have stayed for a longer period
than authorized or subsequently taken up unauthorized employment.2 In other words, to be
an irregular migrant, two criteria must be met. One, the migrant needs to decide to leave the
country of origin. Two, laws or policies must exist that make the entrance or stay in a receiving
or transit state legal or not legal.
The fact that the motivations driving migrations are so diverse and intransigent leaves irregularity hinging on the policies or the implementation of policies of sending, transit and receiving states. Therefore, and as we have historically seen, conservative immigration policies has
not led to less immigration, simply just more irregular immigrants. As immigration policies
become even stricter, the mismatch between the desire of a migrant to exercise his or her

International Organization for Migration, Key Migration Terms, accessed: July 8, 2014,
http://www.iom.int/
2

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right to free movement and the reality of the policies being developed and implemented is
becoming highly exposed.3
The sending, transit, and receiving states all play a role in this mismatch of migrant motivations
and policy. The sending states, for example, are often responsible for the economic instability, internal conflict, corrupt bureaucratic processes, and/or contentious international relations
can greatly inhibit their citizens ability to attain the proper documentation for what would be
considered legal or regular migration. Therefore, any individual wanting to leave the state will
have to do so as an irregular migrant.
The transit state plays less of a pivotal role in providing the legal or regular means of migration
for irregular migrants since the migrants have little or no intention of staying in these states.
For this reason there is little benefit for transit states to allocate resources to regularize these
irregular migrants. However, these transit states may have reason to document these individuals for reasons of national security and public safety which would rely on more effective
border controls, and the insurance that irregular migrant movement through their country
occurs with minimal social or economic disturbance.
The receiving state, as previously mentioned, bears most of the responsibility and must develop effective policies to process irregular migrants that are in the best interests of multiple
stakeholders: the domestic population, neighbouring states, the international community, and
the migrants themselves. It is at this point in the journey, which the definition of irregular migrant loses its descriptive relevance because the term irregular migrant depends entirely on
each countrys immigration policies. Whether regular or irregular, the migrants will be having
some impact, albeit different depending on their status, on the receiving state. For this reason
the term migrant or immigrant will more frequently be used to describe this population.
Using the term migrant or immigrant also provides a more externally valid population to
study comparatively, controlling for indeterminable policy variables that define or do not define the irregularity of migrants.
Understanding and conceding to the fact that states share the responsibility of migrants becoming irregular is the first step in realizing that policies must realistically take into account
the inevitability of migration and the robust motivations that drive it.
Conflicting Interests of the Private, the Public and the State

The three case studies will expose the conflicting interests of the private, the public, and the
state. One of the most common conflicts of interest between state and non-state actors is with
a stagnant or decreasing population trend relies on migration to replenish dwindling labour

Paths into Irregularity: The Legal and Political Construction of Irregular Migration,
Frank Dvell, European Journal of Migration and Law, 2011, Issue 13, p. 275295.
3

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supplies.4 In such instances, the investors, businesses and employers benefit if this migration is
unregulated as it leads to highly efficient informal economies economies that fall outside
constraints of labour laws and workers rights, maximizing production and profit, at the costs
of human rights. But humanitarian civil society actors would argue it should be regulated, on
humanitarian, not economic grounds. From a government and public perspective, there will be
a balancing act of geopolitical interests, and various domestic interests from trying to uphold
and fulfill international human rights expectations, while trying to build economic competitiveness in production and export. As one can see, the debate is immediately complicated by
the fact that the actors are discussing immigration on three different levels economic, social,
and geopolitical. And as a result policy-makers are required to find ways to compare and make
trade-offs of these three very different levels when making policy decisions.
This conflicting interest among state and non-state actors within receiving countries is one
reason for the mismatch that exists between the real demand of labour and immigration policy. The other reason is that the receiving state does not have the capabilities or political
machinery to adopt immigration policy commensurate and simultaneous with changes in migrant motivations. For the latter reason, there will always be a need for policies that take a
reactionary approach to manage irregular migrants. Examples of reactionary policies include
everything from forced removal, incarceration and/or deportation to complete ignorance of
the exploitative vulnerabilities of migrants, to comprehensive regularization schemes. These
reactionary policies play a unique role in both recognizing the importance of state sovereignty
and the ability for a state to make decisions on its own, while being a tool that addresses the
innate human desire to seek social, political and/or economic refuge and opportunity.
For sending and transit states, the interests are usually less contested. Sending states rely on
and greatly benefit from remittances and have little incentive to control emigration, given that
these remittances increase overall domestic consumption.5 However, emigration can further
exacerbate existing economic and social policy concerns especially in regard to countries with
aging populations and general population decline. In both cases, there seems to be less interest by non-state actors relative to their involvement in the matters of being a receiving state.
For transit states, the discourse between state and non-state actors become more of an issue
of why and how much taxpayer dollars will be spent on providing the services to these
individuals or in attempt to restrict their movement with stronger enforcement mechanisms.
Complexity of the Context

As demonstrated, the context of irregular migration is highly complex. With three different
types of states (sending, transit, and receiving), all with their own stakeholders with drastically

5

The Myth of Invasion: the inconvenient realities of African migration to Europe, Hein
de Haas, Third World Quarterly, 2008, 29:7, 1305-1322.
4

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different and often opposing interests, it is to no wonder that immigration policy is difficult to
get right. The number of irregular migrants worldwide is the first indicator that current immigration policies are not meeting the natural inclination of human movement. These natural
inclinations are in its most simple form motivations. This is why the next section will discuss
the various motivations of migrants through the lens of past theoretical frameworks used to
try and understand the phenomena of migrant movements.
PART II: UNDERSTANDING THE CORE MOTIVATIONS AND MECHANISMS OF

IRREGULAR MIGRANTS
One of the biggest mistakes policymakers make in attempt to curb irregular migration is to
underestimate the multi-dimensionality of migrant motivations of every individual migrant.
In the past policymakers have evidently assumed that entire migrant populations are seeking
to enter more affluent states for the same single reason. Whether it is for family reunification,
economic opportunity, or refuge, the assumption is that if a policy can takeaway the economic incentive, or increase the risk of attempting to be reunited with family, then migration
can be controlled. However, policymakers do not need to look any further than to the number
of irregular migrants in the world and the risks and sacrifices migrants make in order to leave
their countries of origin for other destinations. It is clear that the evidence illustrates how robust and complex migrant motivations are and how even the most extreme deterrence mechanisms are not enough to slow their movement across borders.
In response to the errors of the past, it is important to give respect to the multi-dimensionality
of migrant motivations and gain a comprehensive understanding of how these motivations
hinder attempts to slow or regulate migration. One way to begin understanding these motivations is to actually tease out what motivations have been targeted via past policies and the
theoretical frameworks used to support them. Although none have been successful in curbing
irregular migrant movements alone, they all provide a different economic, social, and psychological explanation for migrant movements which can be useful in helping us understand
migration, not as a phenomenon driven by only one of these factors, but rather driven by a
complex interaction of these factors. As will be discussed later, the real value of understanding
these frameworks is to be able to have a much more holistic understanding of migrant motivations and therefore a larger likelihood that future immigration policies will be able to better
fulfill the needs of the state and those seeking regular migrant status.
A study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that investigates immigration
as part of a larger population projection question lays out six theoretical frameworks that
policymakers in the past have used to frame the immigration debate. The six frameworks are
the neoclassical framework, the world-systems framework, the new economy framework, the
social network framework, the dual labour market framework and the policy framework.

16
The neoclassical framework focuses the attention on the economic pull- and push- factors
that fuel migration. At the core of this framework are the employment prospects and respective wage differentials between sending and receiving states. This is the historical and foundational economic argument for migrant movements.
The world-systems framework emphasizes the importance of globalization and marketization driving the existent neo-classical framework. However, it differs from the neo-classical
framework in that the world-systems framework is founded on the idea that in order to be
a prominent sending country, it has to have entered the capital markets. This framework explains the question of why migrations from the poorest countries are less likely to migrate than
those from countries who have entered formal capitalist economies. Part of this framework is
also supported by the logic that migrants who migrate fore economic reasons will not migrate
if there lack of skills will make it impossible for them to attain work in the receiving state, therefore further supporting the theory that displacement versus replacement theories of migrant
worker impact on native workers.6
The new economics framework, which is founded on the idea that migration decisions are
not solely based off of individual economic concerns, is highly integrated with intra-family decisions to mitigate financial risk in the sending state, to ameliorate relative deprivation, or the
idea holding a higher relative wealth than their immediate neighbours and their community.7
This is one theory that attempts to explain the phenomenon of chain-migration seen from
specific town or village regions.
The fourth framework is the social network framework focuses on the importance of social
and familial relationships. However, unlike the new economics framework, the social network
framework relies less on the assumption that migration is a way to mitigate economic risks of
family members in the sending state. This framework rather relies on the assumption that migrants seek immigration that is less costly, less dangerous, and less uncertain, often leading
to migrants seeking out friends, families, and communities that successfully completed the
journey and already established in receiving states. The social network framework is supported
by a study on chain migration where in 27 OECD countries from 1990-2000 the stock of immigrants of own national background already resident in a country, had a large positive impact
on immigration flows.8
The fifth framework is the dual labour market framework. The dual labour market framework
is market driven, similar to the neoclassical framework, but divides the labour demand into
Ibid.

The role of internal and international relative deprivation in global migration, Mathias
Czaika & Hein de Hass, University of Oxford, 2011.
8

Selection or Network Effects? Migration Flows in 27 OECD Countries, 1990-2000, P.
Pedersen, M. Pytlikova, and N. Smith, IZA Discussion Paper, 2004, no. 1104. Bonn: Institute
for the Study of Labor.
6
7

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two separate sectors: one that is more catered towards native workers and the other catered
more towards migrant workers. This framework explains how both high-levels of job vacancies
and unemployment can coexist, but also instances where migration does not seem to have an
effect on native unemployment rates.
The final framework is the policy framework in which is founded on the assumption that
policy can shape and direct migration flows, adjusting and manipulating them in a way that is
favourable for the host country. However, little is known about this framework and whether or
not it truly does have an impact on reducing migrant movements or does it rather just force
them to change (e.g. US-Mexico, Greece, Italy).
One way to categorise these frameworks is by whether they are able to take a quantitative
or qualitative approach to analysis.9 Naturally this divide separates the frameworks that are
economically driven from those that are not, explaining a dichotomy of the economic versus
socio-political factors that drive migration. Such an approach separates the dual labour market and new economics frameworks as two advanced iterations of the neoclassical framework,
constructing the economic forces behind migration, while the other frameworks address different social and political factors that would either deter or entice migration.
A migrants motivation to migrate can rarely be explained by only one of these theoretical
frameworks, nor can they even be explained solely by economic factors or solely social-political factors. There are two exceptions, but both of these exceptions make up a very small proportion of the migrating populations. One of the two exceptions are migrant pioneers, those
who will seek new economic opportunity in a destination that does not offer any level of social,
cultural, or political incentives. These pioneers are an essential type of migrant needed to pave
the way for future migrant waves. The other exception is individuals or families that migrate
solely for reasons of social, cultural, and political benefits. The best example of such individuals would include secondary migratory waves (e.g. reuniting with family) even if the economic
opportunity can actually be worse in the receiving stat than it was in the sending state.
PART III: IMPACT ANALYSIS OF IRREGULAR MIGRATIONS

Overview
A comprehensive analysis of the impact of irregular migrant movements will rely on economic,
social, and geopolitical analyses of past policy relating to irregular migrant flows and reception.
The investigation of the economic impact of migrant populations will investigate a number of
different economic indicators. One of these indicators will be unemployment rates and how

9

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irregular migrants in sending, transit, and receiving countries can influence the unemployment
rates. Important to the discussion of unemployment rates is whether or not there is a displacement or replacement of native workers in the domestic labour market. Another indicator will
be changes in gross domestic product (GDP), and the impact and role that migrant populations
play in a countries wealth. A third indicator that will be investigated is the demographics of
those migrating. Studies have proven that the age, sex, education, religion, ethnicity, and nationality of migrants play an important role in understanding the impact and potential impact
that migrants can have on the sending, transit, and receiving states. The economic analyses,
in joint, will be useful in laying out the economic argument behind why strategic planning of
immigration policies, if designed properly, can have a positive economic impact on a country
while poor planning can lead to economic disturbances and uncontrollable expenses.
The next part of the investigation on social and socio-economic implications of irregular migrant movements raises important concerns of the magnitude of immigration and the potential of irregular migrant movements to create social disturbances. The investigation of the
social impact of irregular migrant movements is very intertwined with the economic argument.
Native populations see the granting of immigrant access to social services, and the social implications associated with the discussion of employment replacement and displacement, as a
threat to their lifestyle and wellbeing. This sentiment of being threatened inevitably fuels a rise
in xenophobia and criminal activity towards migrants, especially when there are fluctuations in
the migrant population. This investigation of social impact of irregular migrants will draw from
the economic evidence that influences this social impact, and the evidence that links or does
not link irregular migrants with xenophobia and criminal activity. It will also draw from events
and reports that illustrate the successes or failures of migrant integration.
The last section of the investigation will look at the impact of irregular migrants on regional
geopolitics. The force of regional pressures, as well as irregular migrant impact on regional
geopolitics is a two-way street that exposes the challenging debate between domestic policy
makers and regional stakeholders. International and regional pressures to uphold human
rights will conflict with regional and domestic concerns of security and economic development
while the domestic interest to quickly process and pass on irregular migrants to nearby states
conflict with the interest of the nearby states to not have to manage the irregular migrant
movements. This analysis will rely on how some states or regional bodies have attempted to
influence the policy of another state, while the case studies will expose how states continue
to exercise their sovereign rights to manage some of the economic and social implications
associated with being a transit or receiving state.

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The Economic Impact of Irregular Migrants

Sending States
The research on the economic impact of emigration generally focuses on one of two different
mechanisms: the impact emigration has on the domestic labour force, and the economic forces triggered by emigrant remittances.
The general argument made for the impact that emigration has on the sending states labour
force is that it relieves pressure on domestic labour markets when unemployment rates are
high or uncontrollable. This, according to Hass, is the case for the Maghreb and a number of
sub-Saharan states.10 However, this positive impact for some sending states may also be the
pitfall for others. In the case of countries that have control over their unemployment rates but
lose important individuals from their labour force due to economic emigration, some goods
and services within the sending state can dramatically change, becoming forbiddingly expensive or being completely inaccessible. This is often the case when professional or educated
populations leave their country of origin to seek greater economic compensation in foreign
markets, driving up the demand, and therefore local costs of particular services.11
The other economic impact of emigration is closely related to the nature of remittances.
One way that remittances have proven beneficial for sending states is through their ability to
smooth and increase consumption, driving and/or sustaining an increase in GDP growth.12 In
2006, the OECD accurately projected the GDP growth rate for both Slovakia and Poland on
this very premise.13
In the discussion of the impact migrants will have on receiving states, it will be investigated
how migrants ability to increase overall aggregate demand, as additional consumers is limited
because of the remittances being sent home. As a result, their demand becomes less than they
supply, driving down local prices as a result of the excess productivity of migrants.14 In this
light we must also consider its reverse effect on the economy of the sending state. Although
remittances lead to sustained consumption and a predicted overall growth in GDP, holding

11
See Part IV: Various Approaches to Handling Irregular Migrants, Case #3: Poland
Cost-Benefits of a Sending State.
12

Money for Nothing? Ukrainian Immigrants in Poland and their Remitting Behaviors,
Pawel Kaczmarczyk, The Institute for the Study of Labor, 2013.
13

Source: OECD (2006b), Economic Outlook, 80, November, Paris; The World Bank,
http://data.worldbank.org/, accessed: July 24, 2014; The impact of the recent migration from
Eastern Europe on the UK economy, David G. Blanchflower, Jumana Saleheen, Chris Shadforth, IZA Discussion Papers, No. 2615, 2007.
14

The impact of the recent migration from Eastern Europe on the UK economy, David
G. Blanchflower, Jumana Saleheen, Chris Shadforth, IZA Discussion Papers, No. 2615, 2007.
10

20
Blanchflowers theory true, we must consider whether or not the emigration detracts from the
ability and capacity for a sending state to produce. If so, how does this reduction in a sending
states ability to produce decrease its own aggregate supply, driving local prices higher, and
with it monetary inflation.
This increase in local prices and monetary inflation along-side the physical out-migration of
the domestic labour force would intuitively make it seem that it would create a new demand
for labour in the communities that are being left. However, evidence from labour and emigration studies in Mexico to the United States suggests that the opposite actually holds true, the
incentives to participate in the labour force are lower in households of sending states provided that those households have family members who have emigrated15. Therefore, not only is
economic emigration leading to a loss of the emigrant as part of the sending countrys labour
supply, but also it is indirectly having commensurate impact on the involvement of their family
and/or communitys involvement in the labour market. This emigration-induced reduction in
labour supply helps explain the past reduction in the labour force in sending countries and the
respective increase in wages as in the case of Mexico.16
However, there are limitations associated with the impact of remittances. Assuming no return
migration, the continuation of remittances will unlikely survive past one or two generations.
For example, provided an individual migrant raises a family in the receiving country, his or her
own children would have little need or desire to send remittances to their extended family in
the sending country, therefore ending the benefits of remittances with the transition of each
new generation entering the workforce. For this reason, the benefits of remittances rely on a
steady and constant flow of immigrants moving from the original sending state to more affluent receiving states. These migrations also rely on the respective wage differentials between
the sending and receiving state remaining relatively constant.17 But given the predicted gradual improvement on the sending states GDP, out-migration is highly unlikely to remain constant therefore slowing the flow of migrants, irregular or otherwise, to what were destinations
of new economic opportunity.18

Emigration, Remittances and Labor Force Participation in Mexico, Gordon H. Hanson, Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean, February 2007.
16

Ibid; Emigration and Wages in Source Countires: Evidence from Mexico, Prachi Mishra, Columbia University, 2004; Emigration, Labor Supply and Earnings in Mexico, Gordon H.
Hanson, in George J. Borjas, ed., Mexican Immigration to the United States. Series: National
Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report, p. 265, Spring 2007.
17

The unemployment impact of immigration in OECD countries, Sbastian Jean and
Miguel Jimnez, OECD Economics Department Working Paper No. 563, July 2007.
18

The impact of the recent migration from Eastern Europe on the UK economy, David
G. Blanchflower, Jumana Saleheen, Chris Shadforth, IZA Discussion Papers, No. 2615, 2007.
15

21
Transit States
Transit states are continuously being challenged to improve their physical infrastructure, increase their personnel, and, provide services for specialized categories of irregular migrants
like asylum seekers.19 But with the creation of these services comes the exploitation of these
services by those of which the infrastructure was not intended to serve. Not only does this
increase the costs associated with irregular migrant movement through transit states, but it
also slows down the process for those who would like to stay in the transit country (See Box 1).
Irregular migrants can also have major indirect impacts on a transit states macro-economic outlook. Related with the geopolitical impact, the inability to manage irregular migrants
can expose insufficient or inadequate policies and programs that can slow intra-governmental negotiations of trade-related foreign relations. Two examples include the negotiations of
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and, more recently, countries preparing for
EU accession. In the case of NAFTA, the treaty hinged upon various labour related immigration
policies that respective countries needed to adopt in order to solidify the agreement.20 In the
case of EU accession, the European Commission and its members will use a states inability to
manage its borders as a weakness and reason why it is not prepared to enter the EU.21
Box 1: The use and misuse of asylum services in Serbia

In Serbia, irregular migrants will use the protection of international law, the asylum
application process, and the services associated with these processes as a means to seek
out food and accommodation as they prepare for their next migration towards their
destination country. From 2008-2011, the number of registered asylum seekers in Serbia
rose from 77 to 3,134.22 Only 2.8% of the 3,134 who registered in 2011, many of whom
accessed free state services completed the asylum process, followed through with their
asylum claim through the first instance decisions, while the rest are assumed to have
departed Serbia on route to another country.23

Price tag for 700 miles of border fencing: high and hard to pin down, Tracy Connor,
NBC News, June 21, 2013, accessed July 25, 2014, http://usnews.nbcnews.com.
20

NAFTA after 20 years: A conversation with the main negotiators (Panel discussion),
Jaime Serra Puche & Michael Wilson, Harvard University Center for Government & International Studies, April 24, 2014.
21

European Commission, Serbia 2013 Progress Report, Enlargement Strategy and Main
Challenges 2013-2014, Brussels, Belgium, 16 October 2013.
22

Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Serbia as a country of
asylum. Observations on the situation of asylum-seekers and beneficiaries of international
protection in Serbia, August 2012, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/50471f7e2.html
[accessed 19 August 2014]
23

Source: Challenges of Forced Migration in Serbia: the state of human rights of asylum
seekers and returnees based on the Readmission Agreement, Marija et al., Group 484, 2013.
19

22
However, transit states do have the ability to leverage the challenges associated with irregular
migration as a means to garner financial support from neighbouring countries and regional
governing bodies. For example, many countries in the Maghreb region, along with Mauritania, Senegal, and Gambia, have capitalised on their new status as transit countries, which has
increased their geopolitical leverage to negotiate migration agreements with European countries in exchange for financial aid and other forms of support.24 As a result, such countries
have been able to reframe their role in the issue as a partner to curb illegal migration, leveraging this new positioning to access much needed financial resources to handle new demands
of immigration related services.25 Depending on the amount of funding that transit states are
able to leverage from regional partners, there can be some added benefit to the economy
from the increase in government spending of funds that are coming from external sources.
In conclusion, even though states can leverage their status of a transit state for international
financial support, there is little long-term economic benefit associated with being in this position. For this reason, states functioning primarily as transit states have few other options to
continue to invest in the security of their country until they can begin benefiting from a more
prominent role of a receiving or sending state.
Receiving States
The economic costs and benefits of immigrants, irregular or otherwise, on a receiving state
are highly contested in the academic literature. But most of the literature would generally
agree that the economic impact of immigrants relies heavily on the demand of labour and
the demographic of the needed labourers and whether or not the supply of irregular migrants
matches those demands. Another generally accepted idea is that the receiving states policies
regarding irregular migrants play an important role in whether or not irregular migrants are
being used to maximize the economic benefit they bring to the receiving state.
One aspect of the economic debate begins with the fact that many receiving countries, specifically those in Europe, are reaching a time in which the natural rate of population growth
are turning negative the daily mortality rate is beginning to surpass the daily birthrate.26
This means there will be a natural demand to replenish the population.27 Population studies,
particularly those performed by non-partisan think tanks like the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, have emphasized the importance of these countries ensuring that they

25
Ibid.
26

27

Economic Impacts of Immigration: A Survey, Sari Pekkala Kerr & William R. Kerr,
Harvard Business School, January 2011.
24

23
have a large enough population-base to avoid sharp changes in the age demographic and any
associated adverse economic disturbances.28
According to this theory, it is easy to see how a young irregular migrant inflow with the skill
sets needed to replace an aging labour force could be beneficial. On the other hand, it is just
as easy to see how an older migrant population or a migrant population that does not meet
the labour force demands could place a great deal of pressure on already stressed social and
civil services. Evidence supporting this theory is quite clear. While the average immigrant in
Sweden represented a net cost of 20,000, their was a net gain of 24,000 for every young
migrant between the age of 20 and 55.29 This is also consistent with the modeling of the economic costs and benefits that migrants of different ages bring to the US, bridging an otherwise
difficult gap in external validity as both states have very different levels of public spending.30
One general misconception is that immigrants stress public and social services, do not contribute via taxes, and take away jobs from those native to the country. However, studies in the
United States document that irregular migrants contribute over $7 billion annually to Social
Security (paying an average of $1,800 per household per year more to Social Security and
Medicare than they utilize in services.31 Even in cases where the state expenditures do not see
immediate returns, research is beginning to suggest that irregular migrants can still have a
positive impact on sustaining the economy (see Box 2). Research on the flow of irregular migrants to the UK further revealed that increased migrant flows have not had a major negative
(or positive) impact on unemployment, GDP, inflation, or other macro-economic indicators
especially in long-run projections.32

29

Adverse economic disturbances are avoided through the smoothing of changes in the
supply and demand of labour force and their respective services. For example, aging populations
create a new demand of labour, both as a means to directly take care of the aging population, but
also to fill the jobs that the aging population will in retirement. Further, governments need the
new labour to sustain the tax base necessary to provide agreed upon social and civil services; Fiscal implications of immigration a net present value approach, K. Storesletten, Scandinavian
Journal of Economics, 2003, 105, 3, p. 487-508
30

31

The high cost of cheap labor: Illegal immigration and the federal budget, S. Camarota, Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Studies, 2004; Five facts about undocumented
workers in the U.S., National Council of La Raza, 2008, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/
sites/default/files/ docs/5FactsUndocs02-08.pdf;
32

The unemployment impact of immigration in OECD countries, Sbastian Jean and
Miguel Jimnez, OECD Economics Department Working Paper No. 563, July 2007; The impact of the recent migration from Eastern Europe on the UK economy, David G. Blanchflower,
Jumana Saleheen, Chris Shadforth, IZA Discussion Papers, No. 2615, 2007.
28

24
However, external validity of these results must be questioned providing that the mechanisms
states use to monitor employment, collect tax revenue, and distribute public and social services can vary drastically. This is certainly true for fiscal impacts, as most European countries
have a much larger public sector than the US. Public expenditures in the US account for about
36% of GDP, whereas the European average is 48%.33
Box 2: The Economic Costs or Benefits of Immigrant Children

A common criticism in the United States is that immigrant children are taking away
resources from native American-born children and slowing down the development
of native American-born children through a need to re-allocate resources to Englishlanguage learning classes, and other resources specifically designated to the needs of
migrant children. But some economists argue that there may be economic benefits
associated with having migrant children in schools. For example, Bacerra states, Higher
student enrolment may lead to the creation of more jobs, not just for teachers, but in
all educational-related services including administrators, maintenance staff, teaching
assistants and other paraprofessionals, bus drivers, and other school staff which would
help local and state economies.34 But such claims without quantitative evidence to
support it remain highly contested.
Returning to policy strategies that maximize the economic benefits of migrants, it is important that immigration policies align with domestic labour demands.35 This has been attempted through numerous multinational agreements ranging from specific stipulations in NAFTA
to various regularization policies in Europe. However, there are often natural forces at play
that can signal to policymakers how immigration policy and regularization programs can be
matched to labour supplies and demands to find the most effective ways to economically benefit from migrant movements. These signals can be as straightforward as seeing the pairing
between irregular migrants and their ability to naturally fill labour specific gaps. This was the
case in the US and Western Europe where many migrants fill labour demands as agriculture,
custodial and food service sectors.

Harvard Business School, January 2011. Economic Impacts of Immigration: A Survey, Sari
Pekkala Kerr & William R. Kerr, Harvard Business School, January 2011.
34

Fear vs. Facts: Examining the Economic Impact of Undocumented Immigrants in the
U.S., D. Becerra, D. K. Androff, C. Ayn, J.T. Castillo, Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare,
2012.
35

33

25
The Social Impact of Irregular Migrants

The analysis of social impact is highly related with the economic impact in that misconceptions of the economic impact of immigration, especially for receiving states, has been used to
fuel much of the anti-immigration discourse on the basis of unemployment rates, labour displacement, and financial burden on the state. The perceived association of irregular migrants
with criminal activity has also been known to shape the public discourse and stereotypes of
incoming migrants. These two factors, coupled with a difference in race, nationality, culture,
and religion, often lead to varying levels of xenophobic sentiment within the public discourse.
This white paper will draw from the previous discussion of the economic impact of migrants,
recent research and correlations between immigrants and criminal behaviour, and reports of
xenophobic violence to share insight as to the social impact that migrants have on sending
states, transit states, and receiving states.
Sending States
There are two key factors to help understand the social impact of emigration from sending
states. The first is the reason or motivation of emigration, and the second the cultural and socio-economic implications of that individual leaving his or her state.
The nature of emigration plays an imminent role on the social impact on the sending state
because it will often reflect the status of the state they are leaving. Looking at the example of
Afghanistan, a growingly popular sending state towards European destinations, the majority
of the migration, irregular or otherwise, is induced by conflict or the presumption of conflict.
In such cases, the migration is found to be more centered on the family, seeing a different
demographic of emigrants (e.g. more women and children) fleeing for reasons of safety. This
is demonstrated by massive influx of women and children seeking asylum in Eastern European countries.36 Emigration that is economically induced, primarily what is seen from sending
states like Serbia, Poland, and Belarus, is more associated with young, educated, urban men
and women.37 This form of migration we would presumably be more associated with remittances, relative deprivation, and brain drain.
The second factor to consider is to what extent there is a diversification of economic, political,
and social power among the emigrating and non-emigrating population. As in the case of
Afghanistan, the fact that the individuals who have economic power are also the ones with the
social and political power, make them incredibly important for the long-term stabilization of
the Afghan state through their social role as a leader within their society. However, emigration
of these individuals, whether it is for social, political, or economic reasons, creates a void in

Afghan Migration in flux, STATT, Issue 10, January 2013.

Social Impact of Emigration and Rural-Urban Migration in Central and Eastern
Europe for Belarus, Serbia, and Poland: Final Country Reports, European Commission, April
2012.
36
37

26
other areas that cannot be immediately filled and therefore risks social or political fallout.38 In
the case of Belarus, Poland, and Serbia, because of the nature of the emigrant and the weaker
connection between the emigrants and their bearing of social and/or political power, it can be
assumed that their emigration inherits less risks when it comes to creating social instability in
the sending state.
Transit States
There are few marketable social benefits of the movement of migrants, irregular or not, through
a transit state. Because of cost burden associated with immigration services and border control, and the unfamiliarity of each new wave of migrants to the native population, they are
often already perceived as a burden before they cross the border. As previously mentioned,
pairing this public perception with differences in race, religion, culture, and nationality, results
in stereotypes and in the worst cases, xenophobic attitudes and undeserved stereotypes of
entire migrant populations.
Xenophobia and Social Exclusion. Greece, Italy, Spain, and France are all heavily burdened
transit and receiving states and have seen how large scale waves of immigration can effect the
social fabric of a nation. In each of these countries, they have seen how an increase of immigrants, in transit or not, can lead the rise of extremist right-wing anti-immigrant groups, public violence, unlawful abuse from police, and other acts of racism and xenophobia.39 But the
magnitude of migrant flow through a transit country does not seem to make a difference. In
Serbia, Hungary, and other Eastern European countries who see a much more limited number
of irregular migrants passing through their states, there is still a high level of public resistance
and violence towards these populations, the infrastructure provided for them, and the people
that support them.40
Pressure from the European Commission and European Union on governments and NGOs
have led to the support of various advocacy and education programs to reduce the xenophobic sentiment towards these populations.41 However, it is too early to determine if such
programs will be successful in the long-term.

Afghan Migration in flux, STATT, Issue 10, January 2013.

Freedom House Reports Greece, Italy, Spain, and France, 2013 and 2014, accessed: July
24, 2014. http://www.freedomhouse.org/
40

Anti-immigrant protests in Serbia, Milos Mitrovic, Independent Balkan News, November 11, 2013, accessed: July 28, 2014, http://www.balkaneu.com/; Hundreds demonstrate
against refugee center opening in West Hungarian village, MTI, June 29, 2013, accessed: July
28, 2014, www.politics.hu.
41

Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance, Multi-annual Indicative Planning Document
2011-2013, European Commission; The Annual Report on the Situation regarding Racism
and Xenophobia in the Member States of the EU, European Monitoring Centre on Racism and
Xenophobia, 2006.
38
39

27
Association with Criminal Activity. Assumptions of irregular migrants and their association
with criminal activity also feed into the embedded resentment of migrants. And in most cases
it is fuelled by only limited instances of migrant criminal behaviour.42 In the case of transit and
receiving states, decisions on how to manage irregular migrant populations can play an important role in increasing or reducing immigrant criminal behaviour. Freedom of movement,
lack of security measures, and access to public spaces, all create opportunities for irregular
migrants to engage in criminal behaviour. On the contrary, the provision of services (e.g. food
and accommodation) can reduce the need for irregular migrants to engage in criminal behaviour because their situation is less dire. For example, if the state does not have the means
to provide access to basic necessities of food and shelter, it could induce petty crime as irregular migrants in transit begin engaging in riskier behaviour in order to survive.
Receiving States
Receiving states are faced with similar social challenges as transit states when it comes to xenophobia, public resistance, and false-associations with criminal activity. But these concerns
are only exacerbated in receiving states because of how irregular migrants have also been
associated with the presumed employment displacement of native citizens. Although the research supports that such resentment should not exist since the social impact of irregular
migrants on receiving states is more often associated with less criminal activity and little if no
impact on local labour markets, this is often construed or pushed aside for more conservative
estimations of their true impact.
Fear of Employment Displacement. As we recall in the economic analysis of irregular migrants
on a receiving state, the results economic costs and benefits that an immigrant can have on a
receiving country can greatly vary depending on the labour market demands and the demographics of the irregular migrant. Remembering that the research shows that displacement
effects tend to be small and almost insignificant, we can once again assume that there is a
disconnect between the public perception that immigrants are taking the jobs of native citizens.43 Even given the macro-economic projections by Barrell that estimates the initial increase
in unemployment for receiving countries following an influx in migration (later returning to
its initial level in its long-term run), that this increase in unemployment is disproportionality
skewed by the a high unemployed rate among the immigrant population.44

Protests against asylum seekers in Serbia raises questions, SETimes.com, November
10, 2011, http://www.setimes.com; Protests Erupt in Serbian town against immigrants after
Gang Rape, EU Times, November 8, 2011, http://www.eutimes.net.
43

44

EU enlargement and migration: Assessing the macroeconomic impacts, Ray Barrell,
John FitzGerald & Rebecca Riley, Working paper, The Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin No. 203, March 2007; The Annual Report on the Situation regarding Racism and
Xenophobia in the Member States of the EU, European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, 2006; The impact of the recent migration from Eastern Europe on the UK economy,
42

28
This fear of employment displacement is rejecting the assumption of the dual labour market
framework previously discussed, where in this circumstance some immigrants will develop
their own markets around specialized products and services for fellow migrants (e.g. restaurants, grocery stores, and salons). This further explains how displacement effects can be almost
insignificant, except with close substitutes individuals of similar skills and background.
Geopolitical Impact of Irregular Migrant Movements

Irregular migrant movements can also have a substantial impact on the regional and international affairs of sending, transit, and receiving states. As previously introduced, two ways it has
historically had an influence on diplomatic relations are with the development of trade agreements and the preparations for accession to the European Union. Also previously mentioned,
irregular migrant movements can also be used by less developed states to leverage resources
from more affluent states who have an interest in effecting these migrant movements. This
analysis will draw from historical examples where states have either been pressured by or put
pressure on neighbouring states to improve or influence the management of migrants.
Sending States
The out-migration of irregular migrants is often associated with war, conflict, poor economic
opportunity, political instability, the abuse of human rights, or the combination of many of
these factors. For this reason, states on the receiving end of these irregular migrations will put
considerable pressure on sending states to provide greater stability and opportunity in order
to slow migration at its source. These pressures come in various forms, from public statements
condemning state action, to various sanctions, to foreign investment.
But the response to these pressures can also vary depending on the interests of the sending
state. For example, in the case of countries that are preparing for EU accession, the EU will provide some financial assistance, but the sending state (or the candidate state) must take specific
measures that align with EU or EC recommendations. In such cases states will forfeit aspects
of their sovereignty in deciding how their policy should be developed and implemented, in
order to access new regional treaty agreements and markets that can have substantial social
and economic benefits for a country. Such examples include the signing and implementation
of readmission agreements and visa-liberalization between EU and EU-candidate states, such
as the case in Serbia in 2008 and 2009.45
In some instances sending states have little intention of solving their outmigration because
of the economic benefits that were previously mentioned above in the form of remittances
David G. Blanchflower, Jumana Saleheen, Chris Shadforth, IZA Discussion Papers, No. 2615,
2007.
45

Serbia 2013 Progress Report, Enlargement Strategy and Main Challenges 2013-2014,
European Commission, October 16, 2013.

29
and relieving pressure on domestic labour supply. This is one responsibility that the EU puts
on EU-candidate states via readmission agreements and other controls.46 The EU will also put
pressures on EU-candidate states to restrict their outflow of irregular migrants. For example, current accession planning for Serbia has been highly critical of the outflow of migrants
from Serbia and has required Serbia to enact policies that monitor and potentially restrict the
emigration of Serbians into neighbouring countries. Such restrictive policies are in direct encroachment of Article 13(b) of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights that that gives
all people the right to leave any country, including his or her own.
Another aspect of the argument is that sending states do have an interest in where their emigrants are going and whether or not they have the ability to work or enter receiving states
legally. For example, if the employment is legal, it is more likely that the migrants will make
more money and send larger remittances back to their country of origin, increasing the economic benefits for the sending state.
Transit States
Transit states are face a combination of the geopolitical pressures from the sending and receiving states on either end of the migrant journey. By the very nature, transit states must play
the role of both sending and receiving state at any given moment. As a result transit states
are often under pressured to secure and monitor their immigration into their state while also
highly criticized for their inability to monitor their outmigration. Such pressures can often
lead to a complicated situation in which stakeholders from both sending and receiving states
have different opinions on the freedom of movement of irregular migrants. This places the
challenge on the transit state to find ways to mediate the discourse through policy development that takes into the consideration all of the factors involved in being both a sending and
receiving state including the protection of the irregular migrants that will add little if any value
to the state itself.
Receiving States
Receiving states, bearing most of the responsibility of irregular migrants, have important decisions to make regarding how they handle the irregular migrants, both in regard to upholding
the human rights of the irregular migrant, but also to ensure that the irregular migrants do
not become a problem for either the receiving country or any other country. Further, receiving
states must take into consideration various domestic concerns that may arise include national
security and, again, impact on the social and economic wellbeing of that countrys natives
Some critics state that sending states should leverage and secure rights for migrants by pressuring receiving states during negotiations of various international agreements. Jakubowski
states sending countries should use access to their market and trade in goods to persuade
Ibid.
46

30
receiving countries to institute other policies necessary to protect migrant workers, such as
legalization, guest worker programs, and protection against deportation for immigrant workers who report violations of their labour rights.47 However, this is ignoring the reality that
the resources low-skilled, exploitable labour found in sending states are more plentiful
and readily available then the labour market demand in receiving states. For this reason, his
recommendation has little leverage since receiving states will already have the upper hand in
such negotiations.
PART IV: VARIOUS APPROACHES TO HANDLING IRREGULAR MIGRANTS

An assessment of how well immigration policies are managing irregular migrant flows can
be based off three general criteria. The first criterion is how well a states immigration policy
adequately responds to immigrant motivations. This is a question of to what extent there is a
mismatch between the policy and motivations of the irregular migrants. The second criterion
focuses on enforcement policy and how an enforcement policy either exacerbates the problem of irregular migrants or supports the overarching goals of a states immigration policy. It
is also important to understand the various forces at play when discussing enforcement policies including the influence of various stakeholders that can undermine the efficacy of even
the best-intentioned immigration policies. Regardless if this responsibility is outsourced to
private, non-governmental, or public resources, special interest groups will always have their
reasons to either support or not support various policies for irregular migrants regardless of
whether or not it is in the best interests of the country or the irregular migrants themselves.
The third and final criterion is how irregular migrants, who are already within a state, are handled and whether or not they will have the opportunity to eventually regularize their status or
wait their lifetime at risk of removal. This final criterion is very much associated with concerns
of human rights, national security, and economic development, and also linked to the implementation of enforcement strategies on those who fall out of status.
The importance of framing the assessment of immigration policy upon these three criteria is
that they all have important implications on the social, economic, and geopolitical environment of the respective state. For example, they distinguish when an individual can or cannot
be reunited with their family, they monitor who is and who is not able to enter the country
legally, they can be associated with excessive government expenditures, and they can be influenced by domestic pressures that can undermine goals of national security, public safety, and
economic stability both domestically and regionally. For this reason these three criteria will
be used to analyze and assess various immigration policy or paradigm shifts the case studies
of the United States, Greece, and Poland, as primarily receiving, transit, and sending states
respectively.

International Commerce and Undocumented Workers: Using Trade to Secure Labor
Rights, Laura Jakubowski, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2007, p.
509-525, accessed: July 3, 2014.
47

31
Case #1: The United States Compounding Effects of Receiving but Not Documenting
The United States is an interesting case study simply because it is per capita the wealthiest
country in the world and, as a result, riddled with difficult decisions as to how to handle its
role as an immigrant destination and receiving state. Widespread comprehensive immigration
reform has not occurred in the US since the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986,
which has resulted in many of the problems the country faces today including those associated
with an estimated 12-million irregular migrants without a path to regularization. Attempts in
2001 and 2006 to pass comprehensive reforms failed which is a likely fate for the most recent
attempts that began in 2009. The one benefit of seeing a lack of reform in the past 30 years
is that it provides a unique opportunity to associate the 1986 policies with its impact today.
Mismatch of Policy and Migrant Motivations
The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) illustrates how a mismatch between policy and migrant motivations has resulted in long lasting social, economic, and political impacts
on the United States. Although IRCA came with a wave of regularizing 2.7 million migrants,
it also introduced strict policy on the hiring practices of irregular migrants in order to crack
down on irregular migrants already in the US as well as deter future irregular migrants from
entering the country. Evidently, the reform was greatly ineffective as an estimated 12-million
irregular migrants, the majority from Mexico, had entered the US and have resided in the US
for a number of years. In other words, IRCA, designed to curb irregular migrant labour, has
ultimately failed.
It is fair to assume that without the pull factor of economic stability and purchasing power that
comes with migrating from a less well-off country to the United States, the migration from
the origin countries would be greatly reduced (Rodriguez-Scott, 2002). However, this disparity
is an economic reality, and it is clear that the attempt to create deterrence mechanisms via
migrant worker policies and increased border security is still not great enough to slow future
migration.
There are two possible reasons for this failure. The first is that the targeting of irregular migrant
labour demand and the oversimplification and generalization of motivations for migration
failed to achieve the deterrence effect that policy makers were hoping it would. The second
is that the enforcement mechanisms to monitor the border and all domestic labour markets
both formal and informal were and are inadequate. Limitations in enforcement mechanisms
will be discussed in a separate section on US immigration enforcement.
Taking into the consideration the limitations of being able to compare the various motivations
we can quantify to those we cannot, it is perhaps warranted to rely on an analysis that directly
targets migrant motivations via survey and interview data. In a study that investigates the motivations of irregular migrants who stay in Arizona (one of the most hostile states for irregular

32
migrants in the US), it was found that even with the major risks involved in being in that state
(violence, discrimination, higher risk of deportation, etc.) that multiple and interconnected
personal, family and community, and contemporary socio-political motivations to remain in a
community outweighed the anti-immigrant sentiment, despite the significant psychological,
social, and economic costs they sustained in this environment.48 This research tells us is that
the motivation behind both immigration and resettlement driven by social networks in many
cases outweigh the risks and/or consequences of strict policies on the economic supply or
demand of migrant labour. This is why temporary worker visas have been criticized for being
highly ineffective for their lack of control mechanisms to control illegal migration because
those who are wanting to stay in the US, and fall out of status, will simply choose to stay.49 The
challenge with creating policies that target the social motivations is that they can often come
in conflict with international law via the breaking up of families and/or public values around
family and family unification.
Even if we were to ignore the social motivations and look specifically at economic pull- and
push- factors, major gaps between the reality and the policies still exist. According to a report
by the Migration Policy Institute, green cards are almost entirely unavailable to low-skilled
workers; while the two main low-skilled temporary visa programs (H-2A and H-2B) vary little over the economic cycle and in any case represent scarcely 1 percent of the current unauthorized population, making them an inconsequential component of domestic low-skilled
employment.50 Provided there are an estimated 8-million irregular migrants in the US labour
force, contributing over 3% of the countrys GDP, it is evident that the labour demand and
immigration and visa policies in the US over the past three decades have been a major mismatch.51
This mismatch between the policies and motivations that created the environment for such
a large proportion of migrants becoming irregular is what has led to the resulting economic,
social, and geopolitical effects on the US that will be discussed in ensuing sections.

Why We Stay: Immigrants Motivations for Remaining in Communities Impacted by
Anti-Immigration Policy, Carmen R. Valdez, Jessa Lewis Valentine & Brian Padilla, Cultural
Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, Vol. 19, No. 3, 279 287, 2013.
49

Patterns of Mexican Migration to the United States, Esmeralda Rodriguez-Scott, St.
Thomas University Center for International Studies, 82nd annual meeting of the Southwestern
Social Science Association, March 2002.
50

The Economics and Policy of Illegal Immigration in the United States, Gordon H.
Hanson, Migration Policy Institute, December 2009.
51

Source: Many illegal immigrants pay up at tax time, Travis Loller, Associated Press,
November 4, 2011, accessed: August 1, 2014, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com.
48

33
The Costs of Enforcement

Enforcement by nature is one of the most challenging aspects of immigration policy, and for
the US, which shares a border with Mexico of 3,110 kilometres and with Canada of 6,416 kilometres; it is a mere impossible feat.52 CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) and ICE are the two
main bodies of enforcement in the US. CBP manages the external character of US immigration,
acting as the prevention and stopping mechanism to irregular migration. ICE manages the internal character of US immigration, acting as a second-line defense via internal management
of legal stay and employment.
Externally, the 2012 budget for CBP was $11.7-billion,53 covering the expenses of 61,354 CBP
staff54, the construction of fencing along the US-Mexico border, among other things.55 To provide context to these larger figures, they include the 1,100 kilometers of fencing that cost the
US government $2.7-billion (adjusted to 2014 dollars) between 2006 and 2009.56
Internally, the US government faces similar challenges to enforce its policies that effect irregular migrants. For example, attempts to monitor activities like the illegal hiring of irregular
migrants in the US is nearly impossible. The estimated 8-million irregular migrants in the work
force, 5.7-million employers in the US, and the average 3,000 audits on businesses a year illustrates the inability of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to successfully enforce
domestic immigration policies.57 ICEs budget is already $5.9-billion per year covering the cost
of detaining 34,000 migrants daily at $71.23 per person per day.58-59 Since the probability of

Source: Congressional Research Service, 2006, http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS21729.
pdf
53

Source: DHS, Budget-in-Brief FY 2007 (Washington, DC: DHS, 2006): 17, www.dhs.
gov/xlibrary/assets/Budget_BIB- FY2007.pdf; DHS, Budget-in-Brief FY 2013, 6, 25.
54

Source: DHS, FY 2012 Budget in Brief (Washington, DC: DHS, 2011): 65, www.dhs.
gov/xlibrary/assets/budget-bib-fy2012.pdf; DHS, Budget in Brief FY 2005 (Washington, DC:
DHS, 2004): 19, www.dhs.gov/dhs-budget-brief-fiscal- year-2005.
55

Immigration Related Detention: Current Legislative Issues, Chad C. Haddal & Alison
Siskin, Congressional Research Service, 2010, http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/key_
workplace/707/.
56

Price tag for 700 miles of border fencing: high and hard to pin down, Tracy Connor,
NBC News, June 21, 2013, accessed July 25, 2014, http://usnews.nbcnews.com.
57

Source: U.S. Census, census.gov, 2011 Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB), https://
www.census.gov/econ/susb/; Unauthorized Immigrant Population: National and State Trends,
2010, Pew Research Center, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2011/02/01/unauthorized-immigrant-population-brnational-and-state-trends-2010/; New Data Shows I-9 Compliance
Inspections Continue to Rise, i-Sight.com, http://i-sight.com/compliance/i-9-compliance-inspections-continue-to-rise/
58

Source: US Department of Justice, FY 2014 Budget Request: Prisons and Detention 2,
available at http://www.justice.gov/jmd/2014factsheets/prisons-detention.pdf
59

Source: DHS, FY 2013 Budget in Brief, 25; (noting that ICE received $5,862,453,000 in
FY 2012); DHS, Budget-in-Brief FY 2007, 17; (noting that the agency received $3,127,078,000
52

34
employers to be audited and thus caught, is so minimal that the expected fine and punishment
an employer would have to endure is almost insignificant in regard to the gain of their illegal
hiring process of irregular migrants.60
The costs are associated with enforcement are not small and as a result they come with stakeholders interested in profiteering. Holding the assumption of robust migrant motivations, this
profiteering will occur in two ways. First, by increasing the risk of being an irregular migrant,
such policies will only drive a more lucrative market for human smuggling and trafficking. Second, the fact that some enforcement services are provided by private contractors, profits can
begin influencing policy (See Box 3).
Box 3: Private Sector Influence

In the US you have two conflicting interests driving policy from the private sector. First
many private industries rely on irregular migrant workers to cut expenses through tax
and benefits evasion and wages below minimum wage (Rodriguez-Scott, 2002). Any
changes in enforcement policy or strategies, whether it is border security or domestic
audits, therefore work against the interests of these individuals within the private
sector.
On the opposing side of the argument, there are private security and prison industries
that benefit greatly from government contracts related to the detention and detainment
of irregular migrants. For example, for the 2014 budget, the US Bureau of Prisons
requested $691 million from Congress to pay private prison companies to detain
irregular migrants, which includes an increase of $26 million from fiscal year 2013 to
house 1,000 additional prisoners (USDOJ, 2014).61 Although we do not have numbers
to compare with the remainder of the private sector, it is important to also note that
the three largest prison corporations in the US, CCA, GEO, MTC, their political action
committees, and their employees have spent more than $32 million on federal lobbying
and campaign contributions [from 2000 through 2012].62
in FY 2005).
60

Undocumented Migrants in Greece: Issues of Regularization, Gabriella Lazaridis &
Joanna Poyago-Theotoky, International Migration Vol. 37 (4), 1999.
61

Source: US Department of Justice, FY 2014 Performance Budget: Congressional Submission; Federal Prison System 86-87, available at http://www.justice.gov/jmd/2014justification/pdf/bop-se-justification.pdf; US Department of Justice, FY 2014 Budget Request: Prisons
and Detention 2, available at http://www.justice.gov/jmd/2014factsheets/prisons-detention.
pdf
62

Source: Private Prisons Profit from Illegal Immigrants, CBSnews.com, http://www.
cbsnews.com/news/ap-private-prisons-profit-from-illegal-immigrants

35
As a result of using private contractors, the external interests that inform migration policy
lead to a contradiction between the importance of irregular migration on a policy agenda
and the weak implementation of enforcement or regularization mechanisms.63
Economic Impact
Economically, there are common misperceptions on the burden that irregular migrants place
on tax payers in the US. These misperceptions are due to two incorrect assumptions; the first
that irregular migrants do not pay taxes and the second being that they put stress on federally
funded entitlement programs. In the US research has found that irregular migrants contribute
over $7 billion annually to Social Security paying an average of $1,800 per household per year
more to Social Security and Medicare than they utilize in services, while also not being able to
access federally funded entitlement programs.64 As a result it is less surprising to find out that
the short-run change in US national income from irregular migrants -0.07 percent of GDP, in
other words, negligible.65
These figures do not take into consideration the costs of government expenditures tailored
towards enforcement, the costs or benefits that result from enforcement, or the economic
stimulus triggered by an increase in government spending.
But remembering the importance that demographics (age, sex, and education) of irregular migrants play, we cannot assume that the same will be the case with future migrations, especially
those that are currently ongoing where the majority of irregular migrants that are reaching the
border are children, unable to work, and if admitted, will rely heavily on federal health care,
foster care, and education programs. Equally important to note, that the reason why so many
children are attempting to enter the US unaccompanied is because they have a better chance
of entering and staying in the US by themselves than any attempt to enter with their parents.
In other words, strict enforcement policies are only resulting in new and unexpected financial,
social and geopolitical consequences reflected in the $3.7-billion that the White House requested to tackle the problem,66 the anti- and pro-immigrant clashes in border states, and now
contentious relationships with sending and transit states in Latin America.

Irregular Immigration Control in Italy and Greece: Strong Fencing and Weak
Gate-keeping serving the Labour Market, Anna Triandafyllidou & Maurizio Ambrosini, European Journal of Migration and Law, Vol. 13, 2011.
64

The high cost of cheap labor: Illegal immigration and the federal budget, S. Camarota, Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Studies, 2004; Five facts about undocumented
workers in the U.S., National Council of La Raza, 2008, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/
sites/default/files/ docs/5FactsUndocs02-08.pdf.
65

The Economics and Policy of Illegal Immigration in the United States, Gordon H.
Hanson, Migration Policy Institute, December 2009.
66

White House Requests $3.7-billion in Emergency Funds for Border Crisis, David
Nakamura and Wesley Lowery, Washington Post, July 8, 2014, accessed: July 30, 2014, http://
www.washingtonpost.com.
63

36
Social Implications
Part of the social consequences of IRCA is directly related with its inability to control or effectively limit irregular migration. An influx of that many irregular migrants over the past 28
years inevitably created a problem so large and so expensive to fix that it only further divides
the American public along partisan lines. In other words, rather than the IRCA being the failure
that triggers reform, it is the failure so deep that it does not allow future reform to take place.
The argument that links immigrants, especially irregular immigrants, with criminal activity is
best studied in the United States, where researchers have been able to investigate the increase
in criminal activity within neighbourhoods when migrant communities move in. According to
a number of different studies tracking both longitudinal and cross-sectional data in major US
cities (including Los Angeles, San Diego, and Chicago), migrant population is either not related
or inversely related with all offenses under the FBI Uniform Crime Index offenses: homicide,
rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny/theft, and motor vehicle theft.67 There are
a number of factors that need to be taken into account in such studies that cannot be controlled for. The first is the reality that irregular migrants may be more reluctant to report crimes
as to jeopardize their ability to stay in the receiving country. The second is that migrants, and
more often irregular migrants, are unable to access employment or government services so
they have no other choice other than to partake in criminal activity as a matter of survival.
However, even given these results, media sensationalism and pre-existing perceptions of migrants and irregular as criminals can continue to misrepresent the risks migrants bring to a
community and lead to the over-reaction and further misconception of the true social impact
migrants can have.68
Regarding terrorism and national security, irregular migrants have also been held disproportionately held responsible. American citizens or immigrants who entered the country legally
have committed most, if not all, of the terrorist attacks and massacres in the United States over
the past half-century.69 But as a result of these events, more conservative immigration policies
and practices have had commensurate impact on the entire process leading to longer wait
times, stricter enforcement measures, and more restricted visa requirements that drive and
fuel a greater demand of irregular immigration.70 As a result such policies are often counter-intuitive as irregular migrants are more difficult to track, therefore reducing the very efficacy in

The Effects of Immigrant Concentration on Changes in Neighborhood Crime Rates,
John M. Macdonald, John R. Hipp & Charlotte Gill, Journal of Quantitative Criminology,
2012, Vol. 29(2).
68

Asylum Seekers Transform Sleepy Balkan Villages, Darko Duridanski, Momir Turudic
& Lavdim Hamidi, Balkan Insight, 2013, http://www.balkaninsight.com.
69

27 Deadliest Mass Shootings in U.S. History Fast Facts, CNN Library, accessed: July
23, 2014, http://www.cnn.com.
70

US Immigration Policy Since 9/11: Understanding the Stalemate over Comprehensive
Immigration Reform, Marc R. Rosenblum, Migration Policy Institute, August 2011.
67

37
which government agencies can handle migrants who might pose a risk to the national security of the state.
Geopolitical Costs
The US works with governments in Latin and Central America in order to help facilitate the removal process of irregular migrants in the US. However, there is little criticism by Latin American states for the USs treatment of irregular migrants and their deportation back to their state
of origin. Without any pressures from external states or bodies, there is little incentive for the
US to change any of their policies to better uphold the rights of migrants.
Case #2: Greece The Challenges of Being a Buffer State

Overview
Immigration of a significant size is a relatively new phenomenon in Greece, mostly triggered
by the fall of communism in Eastern Europe which caused a wave of immigration to Greece
and other Southern European states in the early 1990s. Today, it is estimated that over 90% of
the migrants entering the European Union now pass through Greece.71
Historically, Greece has attempted various types of immigration policy strategies in order to
contain and reduce the flow and stay or irregular migrants in their country. For example,
Greece invested in several years and relied on the help of the EU in order to improve its border
control while concurrently increasing the states ability to detain irregular migrants for longer
periods of time. This also led to massive internal enforcement schemes where checkpoints
in public places were used to identify irregular migrants in hope they could be repatriated.
However, these schemes failed for a number of reasons, including the inability to repatriate individuals, short time in detention due to the massive influx of irregular migrants being
picked up through the expanded internal screening processes, and migrants simply finding
new ways (and paying more) to be smuggled into the country. In other words, it was clear that
an enforcement strategy was not working to limit the flow of irregular migrants in Greece nor
repatriate them to their countries of origin.72
More recently, Greece has tried a different approach a posteriori with an attempt to regularize

A post-modern Greek tragedy - austerity and asylum in times of crisis, Louis Karaolis,
April 3 2014, accessed: August 5, 2014, https://www.opendemocracy.net/; Journey across
crisis-hit Greece, Mark Lowen, BBC News, June 9, 2012, accessed: August 5, 2014, www.bbc.
com.
72

Greeces Migration Problem: From Samos to Brussels, Nikolas Katsimpras, Huffington
Post, September 26, 2013, accessed: August 5, 2014, www.huffingtonpost.com.
71

38
many of its long-term resident irregular migrants. However, these strategies, as will be discussed, are inconclusive in their evidence as to whether they were successful at achieving their
goals or not. The impact of these recent regularization policies is further blurred by Greeces
bureaucratic inability to process, handle, and provide services to many of the incoming irregular migrants today.73
With Greece being the last Southern European state to attempt regularization policies, the
situation in Greece became evidence that a lack of regularization policies are not a disincentive to migration and the establishment of irregular migrants in a country. Greece is also an
example that regularization policies are politically feasible, especially when there is a highly
contentious political, social, and economic debate on policies regarding irregular migrants.
This case study will investigate the ability for a country with an almost impossible border to
protect due to its large coastal areas and rugged mountainous terrain, a large irregular migrant population residing within the state, and recent economic hardship attempt to manage
and salvage its immigration system through regularization schemes. It will also discuss the
economic, social, and geopolitical implications of irregular migrants in Greece.
An Overburdened System
As broadly mentioned in prior sections, the reason many immigrants become irregular is due
to the policies and inability for states to implement their policies, that force or provide little incentive for migrants to be or become regular migrants. Greece is not an exception and with its
relatively small population, large coastline, and geographical importance for migrant routes,
its inadequacies to develop effective and actionable policies are highly exposed. For example,
the mitaklisi system, although well intentioned to provided legal status for temporary and
seasonal workers, takes over a year to process, creating an unrealistic expectation for migrant
workers to be able to plan that far in advance.74 These same expectations go for the requirements for family reunification and the processing of renewing permits driving further irregular
migration or the becoming of an irregular migrant.75

74

75

Irregular Migration and Informal Economy in Southern and Central-Eastern Europe:
Breaking the Vicious Cycle?, International Migration (forthcoming), T. Maroukis, C. Iglicka, and K. Gmaj, 2011; The Fight against Illegal Immigration, Smuggling and Trafficking in
Human Beings in Spain. Ambiguities and Rhetoric, C. Gonzlez-Enrquez, Immigration and
Criminal Law in the European Union, 2006, p. 325345.
73

39
As previously mentioned, Greece is one of the few entry points into Europe from Asia, the
Middle East, and many parts of Africa, and a migrant bottleneck of the Eastern Mediterranean
Route which in 2012, was responsible for over 50 percent of all incoming migrant traffic into
the EU.76 This was only further exacerbated, until recently, by the Dublin II Principle which was
allowing other EU countries to transfer irregular migrants who are applying for asylum back
to the first EU country they had contact with. In this case, 90 percent of the irregular migrants
in the EU are potentially returnable to Greece if they choose to apply for asylum. As one can
imagine, this puts an immense financial and bureaucratic burden on a country, especially one
like Greece currently under strict austerity measures in order to rebuild its economy.77
Regularization Programs & Mechanisms: A Tactic a Posteriori
The practice of regularization is policy strategy used to provide irregular migrants within a
country, other than their native country, an opportunity to attain legal documents for temporary or permanent stay. Regularization can occur through mechanisms or programs. Regularization mechanisms are often part of a broader migration policy framework, and can be
either permanent or open-ended; while regularization programs usually refer to one-time
measures that respond to particular circumstances (such as a sudden increase in asylum applications) or restrictive policy changes that have created a large group of immigrants without
status.78
Prior to the experimentation and use of various regularization policies in Greece, the country
went through a decade of developing an intensive detention, deportation, and border patrol reforms that saw the implementation of expedited removals and the establishment of
specialized border guards.79 But as a policy, it has generally been failing because of the lack
of readmission agreements with sending countries and the migrant motivations to find new
ways and routes of enter Greece as an irregular migrant. This is most evident in how border
and in-country apprehensions have seen relatively little influx throughout the years.80 Policies
extending the length of stay in detention, presumably created as a deterrent mechanism, also
failed because the increase in the number of apprehensions kept centers overcrowded, often
leading to their release after shorter stays, often no longer than 10 days.81 Although it is diffi-

Greeces Migration Problem: From Samos to Brussels, Nikolas Katsimpras, Huffington
Post, September 26, 2013, accessed: August 5, 2014, www.huffingtonpost.com.
77

Dublin II Regulation National Report: European network for technical cooperation
on the application of the Dublin II Regulation, Greece, European Refugee Fund, October 30,
2012.
78

Regularizations in the European Union: The Contentious Policy Tool, Kate Brick,
Migration Policy Institute Insight, December 2011.
79

80
Ibid.
81

Human tragedies and violations. Confusion in the reception centres, M. Delithanassi,
76

40
cult to assess what effect these policies did have in deterring future irregular migration without
a counterfactual, such responses continue to provide evidence that increasing enforcement,
especially without the resources and infrastructure, cannot put an end to irregular migrations
or migrants who fall out of status.
The resources and infrastructure needed to strengthen internal enforcement specifically also
come with a cost and it is this cost that can play a crucial role in shifting the policy discourse
away for one that is strictly focusing on security and enforcement. One way to understand the
forces behind this shift in policy discourse is through game theory. Lazaridis and Poyago-Theotoky describe how the costs and efficiencies of enforcement and revenues from fines can
shift the maximization of benefits for both the government and employers. The basis of the
game that leads to regularization is that if the positive difference of regularization scheme less
a non-regularization scheme is greater than the income from fines, than the government will
choose the regularization policy. Even if the positive difference of the regularization scheme
is less than the income from fines, the government will still choose the regularization policy
given that the it is still a positive difference and that the expected fine is still great enough to
deter employers from hiring only illegal workers.82
What is important to understand in the Greek context, and other countries for that matter, is
that the expected fine for the employer and expected revenue for the government is highly
dependent on the efficiency of such enforcement measures. For example, the probability of
finding a perpetrator is 1 percent compared to the probability of finding a perpetrator as 10
percent can make a major difference as to whether or not regularization is an economically
maximizing scheme. In the case of Greece, where the informal market where migrants work are
saturated with small, some informal, businesses, the ability to efficiently enforce these labour
policies and fining to an extent that is feasible for these small businesses, is challenging, but
also, in some sense, unrealistic. For this reason, it is understandable why regularization began
to be seen as a viable alternative.
As a result Greece has implemented several waves of regularization programs and mechanisms
between 1998 and the economic recession in 2008 where hundreds of thousands of irregular
migrants in Greece applied for the various programs. But generally, these regularization programs and mechanisms have been a relative failure, with large numbers of irregular migrants
still within its borders and few formal channels for immigrants to enter the country legally.83
The largest of these regularizations were in the shape of regularization programs rather than
mechanisms. Programs are usually shorter-term and target large groups of irregular migrants
Kathimerini, September 9, 2009, http://news.kathimerini.gr.

82

Undocumented Migrants in Greece: Issues of Regularization, Gabriella Lazaridis &
Joanna Poyago-Theotoky, International Migration Vol. 37 (4), 1999.
83

Greece: Illegal Immigration in the Midst of Crisis, Charlambos Kasimis, Migration
Policy Institute, March 8, 2012.

41
to provide them some sort of legal status. Mechanisms, on the other hand, are tough of as
longer-term solutions, setting aside new pathways for irregular migrants to attain legal status
over a matter of time. However, Greece as well as its Southern European counterparts have
been put under considerable pressure by the rest of the EU regarding these large-scale regularization programs in that they immediately grant these large populations access to the entire
EU, therefore having much widespread impact on other EU countries.84 However, the Greek
regularization strategies is at the same time being criticized by NGOs that state that the bureaucracies and wait times can often create more problems than they solve, deterring irregular
migrants from even applying if they even know they are eligible.85
A policy brief by Demetrios Papademetriou by the Migration Policy Institute outline nine general advantages to regularization policies that include everything from improving national
security, uphold international human rights and labour laws, and recollecting taxes and tariffs
that were evaded by the irregular migrants who worked in informal markets and economies.
However, in the Greece case, the advantage of regularization that is the most important is its
ability to be a bridge to selecting permanent immigrants according to requirements that can
predict long-term success both for the immigrant and the receiving society.86 In other words
regularization policies can be used a measure a posteriori, to match their policies to domestic
labour market demands.
Economic Impact
In Greece, the economic impact of immigrants has relatively been positive on a macro-scale,
even in light of the 2008 economic recession. Generally speaking Greece has seen very similar
effects as to those mentioned in the prior sections: immigrants creating new jobs for natives,
increase overall consumption, and decrease prices of goods and services leading to more
competitive products for the international market. And like in the United States and elsewhere,
migrants will be the first to fill jobs that native Greeks are unwilling to take.87
A study by IDEA at the University of Warsaw found that immigrants contributed 25,000 jobs
to natives, and where approximately two-thirds of the Greek population experienced a positive impact from migrant resettlement, while one-third experienced a negative impact. This
is backed by research don by Sarris and Zagrafakis, which showed that immigrants in Greece

Regularizations in the European Union:The Contentious Policy Tool, Kate Brick, Migration Policy Institute Insight, December 2011.
85

Regularisations in Europe: Study on practices in the area of regularisation of illegally
staying third-country nationals in the Member States of the EU, M. Baldwin-Edwards & A.
Kraler, REGINE report, 2009.
86

The Regularization Option in Managing Illegal Migration More Effectively: A Comparative Perspective, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Migration Policy Institute, Policy Brief,
September 2005, No. 4.
87

Migration and Migration Policy in Greece. Critical Review and Policy Recommendations, IDEA Policy Briefs, April 2009.
84

42
contributed 1.5 percent to the Gross National Product, substantially lowered price of Greek
products for export. But on the contrary, they also estimated that 50,000 natives lost jobs due
to this influx and wages also decreased by 6 percent.
However, the limitation of these benefits are that the regularization programs often come with
the cost of increasing migrant labour rates to native labour rates, therefore detracting any
benefits associated with cheap labour. This can then reduce the benefit of lowering production
costs and the increase in the competitiveness of exported products.
Relatively unique to the issue of irregular migrants in Greece, however, is how defined ethnicitisation of immigrant labour is in Greece. For example, research has found that Asian migrants
are much more attracted to setting up small businesses, while Albanians and Bulgarians rather
tend to unskilled manual labour. Even among different Asian migrant groups there seems to
be a divide in engaging in niche business markets: Chinese in retail stores and trade, Bangladeshis in restaurants, Indians and Pakistanis in construction and other manual work as well as
in corner shops, Ukrainians and Bulgarians as live-in maids, and Albanian women as external
domestic helpers and care-givers.88
Another important aspect of migrant labour that needs to be taken into consideration is the
ability for migrant labour to act as a buffer for fluctuations in labour demand. The Marxist theory as described by Lazaridis and Poyago-Theotoky is that migrants are the most disadvantaged group within the working class, a reserve army of labour that is pulled in during periods
of economic boom and fired during periods of economic slump. This theory is supported by
research done in Greece by the Hellenic Statistical Authority and Migration Policy Institute that
has data that emphasizes the impact the recession had on migrant labourers relative to native
labourers.
Social Impact
The large proportion of immigrants in Greece, irregular or otherwise, has been a topic of political and social discussion since the first waves if Albanian migrants started to arrive following
the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. However, tensions did not begin to flare until
2008 when the economic crisis created an environment needing a scapegoat. Media, politicians, and natives were quick to target migrant populations, leading to the rise in popularity of
extreme right-wing parties like Golden Dawn which led to violent attacks on migrant communities and the reciprocation of migrant attacks on natives.89
More broadly speaking, the general sentiment towards migrants in Greece is summarized by
being tolerant towards irregular migrants and irregular migrant work, but intolerant towards
Ibid.

Journey across crisis-hit Greece, Mark Lowen, BBC News, June 9, 2012, accessed: August 5, 2014, www.bbc.com.
88
89

43
regular migrants.90 Although the previous example of the clash may say otherwise, the fact is
that native Greeks are relying on the cheap labour of irregular migrants and their respective
consumption. But with it being impossible for native Greeks to know whether migrants are
legally in the country and working or not, all migrants are often grouped together, often because of their race or ethnicity, and exposed to the same hostility.
Geopolitical Impact
As previously discussed and outlined in previous sections and the US case study, the issues
associated with irregular migration are not the problem of one single country. But in the case
of Greece, the geopolitical forces have attempted to make a single countrys problem.
The situation in Greece as a transit state is one in which bottom-up (from sending states) and
top-down (from receiving states) concessions have been very limited. From the bottom-up
Greece has struggled to convince other transit and sending states like Turkey and Albania to
agree with readmission agreements, handcuffing Greece with the inability to deport many of
its irregular migrants. From the top-down, the EU has been no better. To begin, the EU has
consistently criticized Greece and other Southern European countries for their excessive permeability of their borders, their inability to stop irregular migration, their too frequent use of
regularisation programmes, problematic asylum systems, and weak internal controls.91 Among
these criticisms, EU policies, specifically the Dublin Principle, have only placed further pressure
on these states to process irregular migrants.
The Dublin Principle which was designed to reduce the effect of irregular migrants shopping
the various asylum procedures in different EU, has allowed receiving states to send asylum
seekers back to the first EU country that these migrants made contact with if previous numbers hold true, that can be nearly 50 percent of all migrants entering the EU come through
Greece. Ultimately, the Dublin II Principle has successfully cork irregular migrants into Greece,
and as a result, has crashed the asylum system.
Fortunately for Greece, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found that the return of
irregular migrants to Greece under the Dublin Principle breached three separate articles of the
European Convention on Human Rights due to both the inadequate actions of Belgium (and
other destination states) and inadequate conditions and provisions in Greece.92 As a result,

91

92

ECtHR (European Court of Human Rights) Front Kicks Dublin II, Welcome to Europe, January 22, 2011, http://w2eu.net.
90

44
some of destination states are being made to take more responsibility over these irregular
migrants.
Interestingly, the situation of irregular migration into Greece has yet to slow neither with the
recession nor with the violence between natives and migrants. But what has been potentially
trending is that migrants are not looking to stay in Greece any longer than they have to and
will continue their journey to reach other EU countries if possible. This is one hypothesis why
irregular migrant flows through the Balkan states have increased in recent years as those in
Greece seek entry into other EU countries like Croatia or Hungary.
Case #3: Poland The Costs and Benefits of a Sending State

Overview
A decade after its accession to the EU in 2004, Poland provides a unique and well-studied case
in regard to how migrant flows and their impact changed over the years prior and years after
EU accession. What is also valuable about the Poland case is that Poland has undergone similar government and economic regime changes to those among the countries of Eastern and
Central Europe, many who are preparing for EU accession as candidates or potential candidates who have yet to apply (e.g. pre-90s communism shift towards democracy and eventually EU accession). This case study on Poland will draw from past studies that look at how policy
decisions, in line with EU accession, generally shaped the economic, social, and geopolitical
environment. It should also provide insight on how countries, like Serbia, can better react and
prepare for the various economic, social, and geopolitical shifts associated with accession.
For Poland, alignment with EU policies in regard to immigration policy began in the early
1990s when Poland developed their asylum law under EU acquis.93 Low immigration into Poland worked to the advantage of policy-makers in that there was little politicization of migration issues allowing immigration to both be near the bottom of political priorities, but also
allowed for immigration policies to be developed as needed to handle certain situations. The
outflow of migrants from Poland was handled very differently. At the same time Poland adopted EU-aligned asylum policies, they also agreed with Germany on an open short-term labour
agreement, which saw over 290,000 Polish citizens leave Poland by 2003.94
As part of the first accession of former members of the Eastern Communist bloc, and an assumption of the role of an East-West buffer of the EU, Poland plays a critical role to the EU, and
as a result has attracted financial resources to develop the infrastructure and human capital to

Beyond the Focus on Europeanisation: Polish Migration Policy 1989-2004, Anna
Kicinger, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 35, No. 1, January 2009, p. 79-95.
94
Ibid.
93

45
perform its function as a buffer adequately. Where this will reach its limitations is that since the
financial crisis, states and the EU will not have the same resources to assist countries preparing
for EU accession, while having the same expectations in outcome.
Economic Impact
There are two primary angles to look at the economic impact that Poland has witnessed as part
of its policy decisions and immigration. The first is to look directly at the impact of emigration
from Poland, especially on factors such as unemployment and GDP development. A second is
to look at how immigration policies have ultimately resulted in a financial injection into public
sector infrastructure and human capital development.
As discussed in the background analysis of the economic impact of irregular migrations for
sending states, Poland is no exception. With the outflow of migrants that occurred both preand post-EU accession, came both positive impact on the case of unemployment and domestic wage growth. The impact on unemployment is almost self-explanatory; with all else equal,
those who are emigrating are twice as likely to be unemployed at the time of emigration.95
Regarding the wage increase, the same logic discussed in the prior examples can be assumed
to be playing a role in that a combination of a new demand for local labour and remittances
increase the marginal propensity to consume and therefore the need for wage inflation.96 Although not necessarily speaking to causation, emigration has been associated with projected
growth for sending states like Poland for these very reasons.97
The second angle of how immigration policy can have an economic impact is simply through
the leveraging of progressive changes as a trade-off for aid and investment from neighbouring states. Since the early 1990s, when Poland began their long journey to EU accession, they
have leveraged billions of euros from the EU and other regional bodies by slowly shaping its
policies to EU acquis. For example, one region of Poland, it 10 years prior to accession, leveraged the geopolitical situation to access over 150-million euros for various economic and infrastructure development projects. Such donations came from regional groups and programs
like the Structural Policies for Pre-Accession, the Support for Pre-Accession Measures for
Agriculture and Rural development, and the Poland/Hungary Aid for Economic Reconstruction Programme.98 On a national level, over 4.23 billion euros were allocated by the European

Emigration Triggers: International Migration of Polish Workers between 1994 and
2009, Katarzyna B. Budnik, National Bank of Poland Working Paper No. 90, 2011.
96

Does emigration benefit the stayers? Evidence from EU enlargement, Benjamin Elsner,
Springer, Popul Econ, November 10, 2012 Does emigration benefit the stayers? Evidence from
EU enlargement, Benjamin Elsner, Springer, Popul Econ, November 10, 2012
97

Source: OECD (2006b), Economic Outlook, 80, November, Paris; The World Bank,
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG; The impact of the recent migration from Eastern Europe on the UK economy, David G. Blanchflower, Jumana Saleheen,
Chris Shadforth, IZA Discussion Papers, No. 2615, 2007.
98

European Union Enlargement and the new Peripheral Regions: Political, Economic
95

46
Regional Development Fund and European Social Fund in the first two years after Polands
accession, allocated to further development of public infrastructure and human capital development.99 As mentioned in previous sections, the money injected into Poland from outside
regional sources can help stimulate government spending, causing a trickle down affect that
benefits the entire Polish economy.
To think of the counterfactual of Poland not adjusting its policies and not benefitting the emigration that it has raises the important example of how policy can be leveraged to maximize
the economic development of sending states. Without any changes in their policies or an interest in EU-accession, an opportunity to quickly manage its unemployment rates, reinvigorate
the national economy, and develop the public infrastructure to help maintain the countries
trajectory would have been lost.
Social Impact
Young to middle-aged men, who were unemployed and had a low-level of education, dominated the demographic leaving Poland pre-EU accession. This outmigration was predominately directed towards Germany, receiving nearly 70 percent of Polands out migration.100
Post-EU-accession, this demographic has change, including a dramatic increase in the number
of women now emigrating, and a demographic that has a generally better educated. Similar to
other irregular migrations we are seeing today, Polish emigrants are driven by new economic
opportunities.101
But like the flow of irregular migrants through a transit state or into a receiving state, a flow of
irregular migrants out of the state can also create social disturbances. In Poland, for example,
an out-migration of many of its younger, more educated population can have a major impact.
For example, emigration from Poland to wealthier countries is creating a shortage of skilled
professionals. So although it is decreasing the pressure of unemployment in some sectors it
can actually deplete the labour force in other sectors. This has specifically been seen in Polands health sector, where an underfinanced government cannot compete with the benefits
and wages in neighbouring countries, continuing to exacerbate this issue of work force shortages.
But the emigration of skilled workers is not the only concern it is also a concern that so many
women are emigrating from Poland. Research raises a number of concerns regarding the em-
and Social, and Related Issues A Case of Warmia and Mazury Region, Arkkadius Zukowski
& Marcin Chelminiak, Institute for Local Self-Government and Public Procurement Maribor,
October 2010.
99
Ibid.
100

Migration Movements from and into Poland in the Light of East-West European Migration, Krystyna Iglicka, International Migration Vol. (39)1, 2001.
101
Ibid.

47
igration of highly educated women. First, there are proportionately fewer educated women
than men in Poland. As a result, the more that emigrate, the greater the impact on Polands
overall human capital. This also ties to the second generation where a womans education is
highly important for a childs education. And lastly, if the educated women are emigrating,
what is left in Polish society is a population of under-educated women in a discriminatory setting without the ability to help them.
Geopolitical Impact
As mentioned throughout this case study, the pressures from the EU on Poland in preparation for EU-accession played a crucial role in forming Polish immigration policy. Since its first
adoption of asylum laws to meet EU acquis, Poland and the EU had a back-and-forth relationship of negotiations and conversations that would eventually lead to the Polands current
immigration laws and its membership in the EU.102
The EUs interest in Poland and other A8 states joining the EU is to develop a buffer zone for
the East-West migration through Europe, having the ability to influence policies that work in
favor of the original EU countries.103 But the extension of this buffer zone, has started to conflict with the interests of Russia who has also benefited from having influence over Central and
Eastern European states. This became highly contentious as Poland was asked to pick sides
with visa regimes. As required in all other EU states, Russians would then need visas to enter
and stay within Poland. As a result EU accession and the resulting changes in immigration policy had only negative effects between Polish-Russian relations.104
CONCLUSION
This whitepaper on the impact of irregular migrants on sending, receiving, and transit states
exposes the nuances of irregular migration and the challenges that policymakers face when
trying to develop effective immigration policy. A better understanding of these nuances and
challenges give us insight into how past policy strategies have underestimated the complexity
of irregular migrant movements and ultimately failed to extract the benefits that come with
their movement. From the unrealistic assumptions of migrant motivations to the inability to
adequately predict the cost-benefits in the form of economic, social, and geopolitical opportunities that migrants are associated with in both sending and receiving states, this whitepaper

Beyond the Focus on Europeanisation: Polish Migration Policy 1989-2004, Anna
Kicinger, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 35, No. 1, January 2009, p. 79-95.
103

Migration Movements from and into Poland in the Light of East-West European Migration, Krystyna Iglicka, International Migration Vol. (39)1, 2001.
104

European Union Enlargement and the new Peripheral Regions: Political, Economic
and Social, and Related Issues A Case of Warmia and Mazury Region, Arkkadius Zukowski
& Marcin Chelminiak, Institute for Local Self-Government and Public Procurement Maribor,
October 2010.
102

48
results has led us to use existing and develop new theoretical frameworks and principles that
policymakers can use to strengthen the analysis and development of effective immigration
policy.
From the beginning of this whitepaper, a number of assumptions were made to generally
frame the complex phenomenon of irregular migration. The first and most important assumption is that migrant motivation not only varies from migration wave to migration wave, but by
individual to individual. As a result, migrant motivations are difficult to identify and therefore
target as policymakers. A major part of this discussion on migrant motivations is that the resilience of migrants is difficult, if not impossible, to overcome resulting in an almost inevitability
of migrant movements. For this reason the responsibility to effectively manage irregular migrant flows falls upon policies, policy implementation, and their respective ability to adapt to
these situational needs and motivations of irregular migrants. If the responsibility now falls on
policies and policy implementation then it relies on policymakers to determine the states role
within broader irregular migrant movements (e.g. sending, transit, receiving state) and their
ability to design policies that advance the economic, social, and geopolitical interests of the
state.
Historically, irregular migrants have faced a lot of public scrutiny, labelled as criminals among
other terms that have been contested as pro-immigrant rights groups as inaccurate and misleading. Relating to the way irregular migrants are portrayed in the public view is the fact
that migrants are also often incorrectly associated with criminality. Migrant impact on labour
competitiveness only exacerbates the perceived negative effects of migrants. However, it is
also clear that migrants and irregular migrations can also have a positive impact on states, especially economically. This includes improving market efficiency, reducing unemployment, and
having a positive impact on the GDP of both sending and receiving states. There are also positive social and geopolitical impacts of coping with irregular migrants, which are maximized
through the tolerance of ethnic, cultural, and national differences and the collaboration with
other neighbouring states in order to develop policies that also work in their best interests.
However, to maximize these benefits, policymakers must engage in a much broader, holistic
way of thinking about the issue of irregular migration, and the various impacts that policies
can have. The following three guiding principles and the explanation that follows are designed
to help policymakers think more broadly about the phenomenon of irregular migration, and
therefore hopefully develop policies that are more effective.
Principle 1: Irregular migrant movements need to be respected as phenomena
that demand an understanding and respect of the complex psychological, social,
emotional, and economic motivations of individual migrants.
Principle 2: Policies and policy mechanisms need to be developed to meet the
complex motivations of irregular migrants and maximize the impact they can
bring to sending and receiving states.

49
Principle 3: Trends of immigrant labour markets should serve as an important

indicator for long-term and short-term policy development. This includes
regularization mechanisms and programs as well as comprehensive immigration
reform since it provides critical insight into the motivations behind present day
migration and therefore insight into the development of more effective policy.
As discussed in Part II of this whitepaper, it is key that the complexity of the motivations
behind migrant movements is convincing evidence of the realistic inevitability behind some
migrant movements (Principle 1). By accepting this level of inevitability, it at least reframes
the issue of irregular migrations so policymakers can direct their focus on developing policies
that take into account the complexity of migrant motivations. All of this is in hope of having
an effect on reducing unnecessary irregular migrant movements, while also maximizing the
benefits irregular migrants can bring to sending and receiving states.
As part of this reframing the new policies being developed should take into account the psychological, social, emotional, and economic motivations of migrants to have a more profound
affect on controlling such movements (Principle 2). Not taking into account one or more of
the many factors behind migrant motivation risks the creation of major gaps between the intended policies and migrant behaviour, rendering any changes in policy as ineffective, if not
more damaging, then prior to the new changes.
Therefore, under the first two guiding principles migration, irregular migrant movements
should be assessed by a holistic investigating of the motivations of the migrants their respective impact. Migrant motivations should be assessed and considered as a system of highly
complex motivating factors and should take into account both the economic and socio-political push- and pull-factors. This holistic analysis provides a better foundation to develop
immigration policies that could help reduce unwanted irregular migrant flows. The holistic
understanding of the impact of irregular migrants, investigating the prospective economic,
social, or geopolitical impact irregular migrant movements and policies, not only results in
more effective advocacy, but it will also help policymakers define the who, how and why of
the immigrants they want to encourage to immigrate.
The fact that natural economic forces often drive irregular migrations, irregular migrations can
and should be used as an indicator for both sending and receiving states and their domestic
gaps in labour supply and demand (Principle 3). In instances that irregular migration does expose gaps in labour markets, policymakers have a window of opportunity to temporarily shift
policies to maximize the benefits of these movements and markets. Temporary worker visas
and regularization schemes are two tools such tools that policymakers can use to take advantage of theses opportunities. Regularization strategies are often more contentions, especially
in the case of EU member states, but can be an effective tool to relieve pressures on domestic
labour markets of transit or receiving states (See Box 4).
A final important note in regard to these guiding principles is that policymakers must continu-

50
ously be seeking ways to temporarily or permanently regularize irregular migrants. By simply

settling with a status quo as a means of adapting and accepting irregular migrant flows can
lead to an issue that grows proportionately out of control to the extent that a retroactive response is too costly for certain stakeholders such that the regularization of irregular migrants
would create wide-scale economic, social, or geopolitical disturbances as in the case of the
United States.
Box 4: The Use of Regularization Programs and Mechanisms

Assuming that the borders are adequately secured, and the amount of irregular
migration can generally be constrained, regularization provides one example of an
extremely beneficial tool to quickly adapt and provide legal status to those who are filling
needed roles within the domestic labour market. Regularization programs can be an
especially important tool because of its temporary nature and ability to quickly adjust
to ever-changing labour markets. Regularization is also assumed to have positive effects
on human rights, reducing the vulnerabilities of irregular migrants, especially in effect of
shifting their work from informal to formal economies.
Although more contentious in the EU because of the free movement across borders
within the EU, regularization programs and mechanisms play a key role for some of the
fringe states to manage their migrant flows and the pressure that these flows put on
the labour market. In Greece, Spain, and Italy, for example, regularization programs
and mechanisms are becoming more and more common in part because of these very
reasons. But along with these regularization programs and mechanisms, these migrants
often gain access to travel documents allowing them to move freely throughout the rest
of the EU. Therefore, although it relieves labour market pressures in these initial receiving
or transit states, it only shifts these pressures on to neighbouring states, creating the
regional debate upon these very topics today. That said, receiving and transit states in
situations like Greece, Spain, and Italy, should continue to exercise their right to use these
regularization programs and mechanisms as a way to protect the economic and social
interests of their own state, even if it is used as a means to relieve pressures on domestic
labour markets.
In summary, we need to reframe how we think about irregular migrants. Instead of looking at
the surface of their irregularity individuals trying to get somewhere that they do not belong
we should see their irregularity as indicators of various gaps within the current immigration
policy. By shifting the way we view irregular migrants, it allows us to ignore assumptions about
the intentions of irregular migrants away and rather focus on the intrinsic costs and benefits
that immigrants can bring to a country given regularity.

51
As a result of this sort of framing we come to conclude that immigration policy would not
look too different from what it does today, but rather more inclusive of the best practices of
some states. For example, such framing would encourage more options for legal migration,
and regularization mechanisms and programs as effective tools to stimulate domestic economies, create a cushion of a transient labour force among natives to adjust for fluctuations in
unemployment and demographic shifts, and backfill aging populations in countries where the
natural rate of population growth is turning negative.
But given these considerations, it is still important to note that the social impact of irregular
migrant movements is very real. Large shifts in the social demographic of any society, whether
it is from emigration or immigration, can lead to a great level of public disturbance. But to
enact policy backed by these fears and concerns will only to lead down a road of self-fulfilling
prophecy. The more restrictive policies become and the greater the challenge it is for migrants
to attain and maintain legal status. As a result, more migrants will be forced into irregular
status and forced to resort to unregulated, and potentially criminal behaviour becoming a
greater cost and burden to the receiving country and its native citizens.
But the theoretical framework that this whitepaper sets to develop is one that will help policymakers overcome the tendency to associate the challenges of migration and irregular migrants
with one-dimensional solutions. Instead, the two branches of immigration policy, enforcement
and regularization, need to complement one another, and the gaps between their policy and
their implementation need to be narrowed. For immigration policies to be effective they must
be accessible and must include incentives that align with the interests of the migrants. If the
policies can meet these two requirements, they can and will successfully reduce the number of
migrants that will be breaking the laws, reduce the demand for costly enforcement measures,
and maximize the very economic, social, and geopolitical benefits they bring to all states along
the migrant journey.
BELGRADE, 2014

Unlocking The Benefits of Irregular Immigration

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UNLOCKING

THE BENEFITS OF IRREGULAR IMMIGRATION

UNLOCKING THE BENEFITS OF IRREGULAR IMMIGRATION:

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

GUIDING PRINCIPLES TO DEVELOPING REALISTIC IMMIGRATION POLICIES

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

A Pathway to Irregularity: The Role of States in Making Migrants Irregular

Sending, Transit, and Receiving States 11

PART II: UNDERSTANDING THE CORE MOTIVATIONS

PART III: IMPACT ANALYSIS OF IRREGULAR MIGRATIONS

The Economic Impact of Irregular Migrants 19

PART IV: VARIOUS APPROACHES TO HANDLING

of Receiving but Not Documenting

Case #2: Greece The Challenges of Being a Buffer State

Case #3: Poland The Costs and Benefits of a Sending State

Case #1: The United States Compounding Effects

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

PART I: THE CONTEXT OF IRREGULAR MIGRATIONS

Sending, Transit, and Receiving States

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

A Pathway to Irregularity: The Role of States in Making Migrants Irregular

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Conflicting Interests of the Private, the Public and the State

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Complexity of the Context

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

PART II: UNDERSTANDING THE CORE MOTIVATIONS AND MECHANISMS OF

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

PART III: IMPACT ANALYSIS OF IRREGULAR MIGRATIONS

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

The Economic Impact of Irregular Migrants

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Box 1: The use and misuse of asylum services in Serbia

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Box 2: The Economic Costs or Benefits of Immigrant Children

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

The Social Impact of Irregular Migrants

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Geopolitical Impact of Irregular Migrant Movements

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

PART IV: VARIOUS APPROACHES TO HANDLING IRREGULAR MIGRANTS

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

The Costs of Enforcement

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Box 3: Private Sector Influence

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Unlocking the Benefits of Irregular Immigration:

Case #2: Greece The Challenges of Being a Buffer State