For centuries, people have been fleeing governments that limit their freedoms and moving to countries, or to less regulated areas within their own nations, that afford greater freedom. For many years, the U.S. had an open door to those immigrants. That door is no longer quite so open. One reason is that some immigration opponents believe immigrants will import the…
Some immigration opponents claim that immigrants import bad institutions and policies from their country of origin into their new home country. We argue just the opposite—namely, that immigrants are more likely to self‐select into countries with better institutions than those in their home countries. Researchers have examined this issue in both a cross‐country and within‐country context. Their findings have been mixed.…
In a new paper (forthcoming in the Cato Journal), LSPI Texas Policy Fellow Meg Tuszynski and her SMU colleague Dean Stansel examine this question empirically, and find little – if any – evidence in support of this conjecture. Previous literature has assessed this question using immigrant populations as a whole, and found mixed results. In this paper, Tuszynski and Stansel ask…