Voter Beliefs, Electoral Concerns and Undocumented Migration

doi:10.4236/ojps.2013.34020

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Open Journal of Political Science

2013. Vol.3, No.4, 143-145

Published Online October 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojps) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojps.2013.34020

Voter Beliefs, Electoral Concerns and Undocumented Migration

Ruxanda Berlinschi1,2, Mara Pasquamaria Squicciarini2,3

1Department of Economics, HUBrussel (HUB), Brussels, Belgium

2LICOS, Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance, Department of Economics,

University of Le u ven, Leuven, Belgium

3FWO—Research Foundation Flanders, Brussels, Belgium

Email: ruxanda. be rl i ns ch i@hubrussel.be, [email protected]

Received July 25th, 2013; revised August 29th, 2013; accepted September 13th, 2013

under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction

in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

If voters underestimate the benefits that immigrants bring to their country, policy makers need to cam-

paign for suboptimal migration levels in order to win elections. Once in power, they face a trade-off be-

tween keeping electoral promises by restricting immigration and stimulating the economy by favoring

immigration. One solution to this trade-off may be maintaining high barriers to legal migration, while

keeping a blind eye on undocumented migration.

Keywords: Immigration; Biased Beliefs; Electoral Concerns

Introduction

As immigration to Western countries has been increasing in

the past decades, its effects on host countries have been ob-

served, analyzed and discussed at various levels, from academic

journals, to policy reports, press stories and everyday conversa-

tions. In these ongoing debates, a gap seems to emerge between

the conclusions of scientific studies regarding the effects of

immigration and public perceptions of these same effects.

Scientific studies give a broadly positive picture of the over-

all impact of immigration on the economy and society. Immi-

grants are good for the economy because they stimulate innova-

tion (Hunt & Gauthier-Loiselle, 2008), productivity (Chellaraj

et al., 2008), and growth (Ortega & Peri, 2009). Increasing

South-North migration could lead to huge income gains, a sig-

nificant part of which would be reaped by host countries (An-

derson & Winters, 2008; Clemens, 2011). Immigrants have a

small positive impact on public finances (Auerbach & Oreo-

poulos, 1999; Lee & Miller, 2000), i.e. on average, their tax

contributions exceed the benefits they receive. While immigra-

tion does sometimes depress wages of non-qualified workers in

destination countries, these effects are small and negligible

compared to the overall gains from labor mobility (Friedberg &

Hunt, 1995; Card, 2001; Clemens, 2011). Migration does lead

to greater religious and cultural heterogeneity in the host coun-

try, and while this undermines trust and social solidarity in the

short run (Putnam, 2007), it brings social benefits in the long

run.

Public opinion about immigration is generally less positive,

as witnessed by the rise of anti-immigration parties in many

Western countries and the consistent presence of immigration

among the main public policy concerns in opinion polls1. Peo-

ple’s negative attitudes towards migration have two main di-

mensions: economic and cultural (Mayda, 2006; Scheve &

Slaughter, 2001; O’Rourke & Sinott, 2006). Many natives be-

lieve that migrants are stealing their jobs, putting downwards

pressure on their wages and abusing the social system. Few

natives are aware of immigrants’ positive impact on innovation,

trade, entrepreneurship and job creation. Many natives perceive

immigrants as a threat to their culture, values and security and

are not aware of the long term social benefits of inter-ethnic

interaction.

This divergence between scientific studies and public opin-

ion could be explained by the fact that the benefits of migration

are widespread and diffuse, while its costs, such as an incident

with a member of a foreign community, are local and concen-

trated, and therefore more visible. Moreover, specific negative

stories are more likely to catch media and public attention than

diffuse medium term benefits (McCluskey & Swinnen, 2004;

Swinnen & Heinz, 2013).

Policy makers are informed about both academic and public

opinion on a certain issue. In order to win elections, they need

to promise policies that are appealing to the electorate, i.e. re-

stricted immigration. In order to stimulate the economy, they

need to implement policies that would bring economic and

social benefits, i.e. more open immigration. Elected politicians

therefore face the trade-off between being perceived as prom-

ise-keeping and being perceived as having stimulated economic

growth, both of which affect the probability to be re-elected.

One possible solution to this trade-off is to keep restrictions to

legal migration and tolerate a certain level of undocumented

migration. This solution may work if voters believe that legal

migration flows are chosen by the authorities to a larger extent

than undocumented migration flows. We formalize this argu-

ment with a simple political-economy model.

This note contributes to a recent strand of the political econ-

omy of migration literature, which hypothesizes that high

numbers of undocumented migrants are deliberately tolerated

by some governments, for economic, political and electoral

1Ex: Eurobarometer (2006, 2013).

R. BERLINSCHI, M. P. SQUICCIARINI

reasons (Hillman & Weiss, 1999; Fasani, 2009; Facchini &

Testa, 2010; Berlinschi & Squicciarini, 2011). By focusing on

politicians’ electoral concerns as an explanation for illegal im-

migration, this paper is closest in line with Facchini and Testa

(2010). While in their paper undocumented immigration is

driven by voters’ imperfect information about the politician’s

type, in our paper it is driven by voters’ imperfect information

about the impact of immigration.

Theoretical Framework

Consider an economy populated by N natives, indexed by i,

who elect a politician for implementing a certain migration

policy. Migration policy is defined as a couple (M, I) where M

is the number of legal and I the number of illegal migrants

allowed to participate in the economy. Assume that there exists

an optimal total migration level for each voter i, and

that for a given total number of migrants, natives’ utility is

decreasing with the share of illegal migrants2. We model these

assumptions by assigning the following reduced-form utility

function t o native i:

M



UMIcMI MI



  (1)

where c is a constant and 0





0I

is the magnitude of the wel-

fare loss associated with migrants’ illegal status. This utility

function is maximized at and *

M.

Let be the median voter, whose utility function:

im



UMIc MIMI



 2

, (2)

is maximized at and 0I*

M.

Assume that voters underestimate the migration level which

maximizes their utility. This can be modeled by assuming that

the anticipated utility of native i, i.e. before migration policy is

implemented, is given by:



UMIc MIMI



  (3)

with *A

M for all i.

Denote by C

median voter’s anticipated optimal migra-

tion level with *C

M.

Assume that incumbent politicians are judged both on their

achievements (voters’ welfare at the end of their mandate) and

on their credibility (the extent to which they have kept their

electoral promises).

Consider the following three-stage game,





1, 2, 3t. In

stage 1, elections take place. In this stage, all politicians are

challengers competing on migration policies. Under majority

voting, the policy winning the political contest will be the one

closest to median voter’s preferences, i.e. (MC, 0). In stage 2,

the elected politician implements a certain migration policy (M,

I) which may differ from the electoral promise (MC, 0). At the

end of this stage, voters observe their welfare, as well as the

gaps between the electoral promise and the implemented poli-

cies, i.e. C

M and I. In stage 3, a second election takes

place. In this election the incumbent politician competes with a

challenger. The probability for the incumbent to be re-elected

depends positively on voters’ welfare and negatively on the gap

between electoral promises and implemented policies.

Should deviations in legal and undocumented migration in-

duce the same credibility loss for the policy maker? We argue

that deviations in illegal migration should induce a smaller loss

in credibility. While legal migrants have a visa or a residence

permit provided by the authorities, undocumented migrants are

by definition not allowed to reside in the country. Therefore

legal migration flows should be perceived as being a result of

authorities’ intention, to a larger extent than undocumented

migration flows.

We can model these ideas by assuming that the probability

for the incumbent to be re-elected is an increasing function of E,

where E given by:



*2 C

Ec MIMIMMI

 

 



(4)

The first three terms of E represent median voter’s welfare at

the end of period 2, as a function of implemented migration

policies. The last term represents deviations from electoral

promises. The term 0



 represents the weight of the credi-

bility loss on the probability of being re-elected. The term



 represents the relatively lower cost of deviations in

undocumented migration levels.

Let us now derive the two endogenous variables of the model,

i.e. migration policies implemented in period 2. The policy

maker will implement the policies that maximize re-election

probability, i.e. he will maximize E with respect to M and I.

This simple optimization problem leads to the following result.

Result: The migration policy





I implemented by the

incumbent politician is given by:











11 11

  



 

 





 

(5)











MM











 (6)

In order to maximize re-election probability, the politician

should implement a legal migration level O

equal to a con-

vex combination between the optimal and campaigned migra-

tion levels *

and C

, and a strictly positive illegal migra-

tion level . The deviations between promised and imple-

mented migration levels arise from voters’ biased beliefs about

the impact of migration. From (5) and (6), it is easy to check

that if the median voter has correct beliefs about the welfare

maximizing policy, then the politician does not deviate from

electoral promises and chooses zero undocumented migration,

i.e. if

M, then *OC

MM and 0



. From

(6), we can also see that if the credibility loss suffered by the

politician is the same for deviations in legal and undocumented

migration levels, no illegal migration will be induced, i.e. if





, then 0



. The level of illegal migration is de-

creasing in the welfare cost associated with illegality μ and in

the credibility parameter



Some level of undocumented immigration may thus be inten-

tionally tolerated by policy makers when the following condi-

tions are satisfied: voters underestimate the optimal number of

immigrants for their country, politicians are electorally com-

pensated for stimulating the economy and for keeping electoral

promises, and undocumented migration is perceived to be less

controllable than regular migration.

2This assumption is supported by many public opinion surveys, such as

EuroBarometer. Th is may

e due to illegal migrants being employed in

the black economy, paying fewer taxes and social security contributions

being on average less skilled and considered more likely to engage in

criminal activities.

144

R. BERLINSCHI, M. P. SQUICCIARINI

Conclusion

Many Western voters seem to underestimate the benefits that

immigrants bring to their country. Policy makers concerned

with winning elections therefore do not campaign for reducing

immigration barriers, even though such policies could bring

huge economic benefits according to scientific studies. Once in

power, policy makers face the trade-off between stimulating the

economy by increasing immigration, and being perceived as

keeping electoral promises by restricting immigration. The

solution to this trade-off may be maintaining strong barriers to

legal migration, while turning a blind eye on undocumented

migration. Even though undocumented immigrants may bring

fewer economic benefits, as they only work in some specific

sectors and pay less taxes, such a strategy may allow policy

makers to help some economic sectors and in the same time

avoid being perceived as too immigration-friendly, since by

definition, undocumented migrants are not allowed to reside in

the country. This argument may partly explain why some west-

ern governments have been silently allowing hundreds of thou-

sands of undocumented migrants to participate in their econo-

mies, while keeping strong restrictions on legal migration

channels.

Acknowledgements

We thank A. Ariu, G. De Luca, and J. Fidrmuc for their

comments and suggestions. M.P.S. gratefully acknowledges

financial support from FWO-Flanders.

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