Admission policies and immigrant skills

Abstract

It is often argued that stricter immigration policies have a positive selection effect on immigration from the perspective of the host country, as it makes migration less attractive for less-skilled individuals. However, there is relatively little evidence confirming this argument. The aim of this letter is to analyse how the change of the European immigration policy in 2002 and 2003 with regard to Colombia and Ecuador citizens affected the sorting of immigrants arriving to Spain. Our findings suggest that following the imposition of visa requirements for immigrants from Colombia and Ecuador, the proportion of the least-skilled emigrants diminished while the proportion of most-skilled immigrants to Spain from these two countries increased with respect to those migrating to the United States.

Keywords:

• immigration policy
• visa requirements
• difference-in-difference estimator

JEL Classification:

• I20
• J61

Notes

¹ The sample frame was the municipality register (padrón municipal), where all foreign-born individuals must register to gain access to school, health care or even to obtain a document that shows where they reside or the number of years lived in Spain for amnesty immigrant procedures. The registration process is independent of immigrant status, i.e. anyone living in the municipality may register and the municipality is required by law to register all individuals living in its area.

² As a robustness check, we estimate our regression equation separately for immigrants from Colombia or Ecuador and also defining the step variable with respect to the year in which the visa requirement was implemented for each country, and qualitative conclusions are robust, regardless of the estimate’s absolute value. We also include all immigrants aged 16–55 at the time of entry and come to similar conclusions.