Is the Mediterranean the New Rio Grande? US and EU Immigration Pressures in the Long Run

摘要

The tens of thousands of migrants streaming into Europe during late 2015 and early 2016 created an indelible image of how humanitarian crises-in this case associated with the Syrian civil war-propel international migration. Although political instability in the Levant may have kicked migration to Europe into a higher gear, immigration flows to the continent in the medium- and long-run are likely to be sustained by sharp differentials in labor-supply growth between regions to the north and to the south of the Mediterranean Sea. The present European migration scene is the latest act in a long-running global drama in which cross-country differences in population growth, abetted by disparities in aggregate labor productivity, create pressures for international migration. Periodically, economic or political crises unleash these pressures and generate sustained flows.