How Entry Criteria Structure Labor Market Outcomes for Immigrant Communities

This paper investigates how immigration eligibility criteria contribute to labor market outcomes in immigrant communities.    Do more flexible entry criteria contribute to the long-term over-representation of immigrant communities in low-skilled occupations? Do more stringent criteria facilitate the economic integration of immigrant workers?  Do immigrants selected by employers have better long-term labor market outcomes than those selected by the government through points systems? If, even in those countries with occupation-based entry criteria, immigrant communities remain in low-skilled positions,  what limits their economic opportunities?  Here, we use labor force survey data to trace the form and trajectory of immigrant  labor market participation in several European and North American economies with very different entry criteria, to address these questions and to explore their implications.  This is the first in a series of papers on redistributive policy in diverse societies.