Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants' quality?
Résumé
Destination countries can adopt selective immigration policies to improve migrants' quality. Screening potential
migrants on the basis of observable characteristics also influences their self-selection on unobservables. We
propose a model that analyzes the effects of selective immigration policies on migrants' quality, measured by
their wages at destination. We show that the prevailing pattern of selection on unobservables influences the
effect of an increase in selectivity, which can reduce migrants' quality when migrants are positively selfselected
on unobservables. We also demonstrate that, in this case, the quality-maximizing share of educated
migrants declines with the scale of migration.