Immigration Amnesties in the Southern EU Member States - A Challenge for the Entire EU?

Romanian Journal of European Studies, Nos. 5-6, pp. 15-32, 2007

18 Pages Posted: 22 May 2009

See all articles by Tim Krieger

Tim Krieger

University of Freiburg - Department of Economics

Steffen Minter

University of Paderborn - Department of Economics

Date Written: May 22, 2009

Abstract

The question of how to proceed with illegal immigrants arriving in the southern EU member states is one of the pressing policy issues for the EU. In our article we will provide a thorough analysis of immigration policy and immigration amnesties from an economist's perspective. In particular, we are interested in answering questions such as why (at all) some states legalize irregular immigrants and what effects unilateral policy measures in this field have in an economic union such as the EU. While most of the work in the area of immigration amnesties focuses on the single country case we extend this scenario to the case in which the legalizing country is part of a federation and spillover effects between different states may occur. Several interesting aspects will be considered in this context, in particular, potential changes of the policy mix between internal and external enforcement on the one hand and legalisation on the other hand when a federal setting is considered instead of a single country.

Keywords: illegal migration, immigration policy, regularization, amnesties, enforcement, interregional transfers, European Union

JEL Classification: J61, F22, R50

Suggested Citation

Krieger, Tim and Minter, Steffen, Immigration Amnesties in the Southern EU Member States - A Challenge for the Entire EU? (May 22, 2009). Romanian Journal of European Studies, Nos. 5-6, pp. 15-32, 2007 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1408552

Tim Krieger (Contact Author)

University of Freiburg - Department of Economics ( email )

University of Freiburg
Wilhelmstr. 1b
Freiburg, D-79085
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.wguth.uni-freiburg.de

Steffen Minter

University of Paderborn - Department of Economics ( email )

Warburger Str. 100
D-33098 Paderborn
Germany