Controlling Immigration?

While immigration rates have increased in most Western states and lead to fierce political debates we know surprisingly little about the capacities of states to control migration flows. So far most studies focused on individual cases as there has been hardly any data available to compare immigration policies across a large number of countries. In this paper first insights from the Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) project will be presented. This project proposes to create a set of sophisticated quantitative indices to measure immigration policies in all OECD countries and for the time period 1980-2010. This dataset will allow investigating to what extent more restrictive policies lead to lower immigration rates and how important the effect is compared to socio-economic aspects that might attract or deter migrants. Differentiating between internal and external regulations and control mechanisms as well as requirements, conditions, associated rights and security of status it will be possible to study which dimensions of immigration policy play a particular role. While high requirements might deter immigrants, a generous policy that attributes many economic and political rights to immigrants might attract more.