Immigration law

Immigration, that is, the movement of people – usually for permanent residence – into another country or region to which they are not native, is in many respects regulated by the countries concerned. In the following, we discuss some typical motives of migrants (Chap. 2), deal with the most important welfare effects of immigration and their distribution (Chap. 3), and try to understand why nation states regulate immigration more restrictively than the mobility of goods and capital and why international agreements on immigration are less frequent than those on trade and investment (Chap. 4). In this chapter, we also discuss the free movement of people in the EU as an example for a far-reaching cooperation in this field. Finally, we conclude this entry with some ideas on asylum law from an economic perspective (Chap. 5).