Competition as a track for preventing illegal immigration

Rich countries often face sizeable illegal migration. This paper suggests that these countries would use the financial aid which they give to the source countries as an instrument to prevent illegal immigration. The core of this policy is to allow the source countries to compete for the pre-determined aid, which would be distributed according to the cross-proportion of the apprehended illegal aliens. Moreover, we show that it may be beneficial for the rich country to split the source countries into competing pairs rather than allowing all of them to compete jointly. The rich country has basically two policy means: funds allocated to strengthening its border control; and the foreign aid given to the source countries. The multi-country general equilibrium model presented shows how the rich country, by choosing an appropriate mix of these two policy means, can minimize the number of illegal immigrants subject to its budget constrain.Received: 15 August 2002, Accepted: 21 January 2004, JEL Classification: F22Nava Kahana, Tikva Lecker: The authors are grateful to two anonymous referees for their valuable comments.