It seems unclear to me what would count as gradual here. The obvious candidate is to let in a few more people legally, by increasing quotas or lowering restrictions. But would this signal cause the current stream of illegal entry to shift to legal entry? Or would it encourage even more illegal entry? If the policy seems permanent, it low…
It seems unclear to me what would count as gradual here. The obvious candidate is to let in a few more people legally, by increasing quotas or lowering restrictions. But would this signal cause the current stream of illegal entry to shift to legal entry? Or would it encourage even more illegal entry? If the policy seems permanent, it lowers the cost of legal entry, meaning more persons would tend to choose it, but it isn’t clear that it would not also increase demand generally, with unclear effects on illegal entry. If it is credibly temporary, with ever less restrictive policies on the horizon, does that cause people to want to wait enough to have the desired effect? I’m not sure.
Would anything else count as “gradual”? What is a good way to ease into having more immigration, while reserving the ability to reverse the policy if things don’t work out?
It seems unclear to me what would count as gradual here. The obvious candidate is to let in a few more people legally, by increasing quotas or lowering restrictions. But would this signal cause the current stream of illegal entry to shift to legal entry? Or would it encourage even more illegal entry? If the policy seems permanent, it lowers the cost of legal entry, meaning more persons would tend to choose it, but it isn’t clear that it would not also increase demand generally, with unclear effects on illegal entry. If it is credibly temporary, with ever less restrictive policies on the horizon, does that cause people to want to wait enough to have the desired effect? I’m not sure.
Would anything else count as “gradual”? What is a good way to ease into having more immigration, while reserving the ability to reverse the policy if things don’t work out?