give it credit for (Lahav, 2004), in that it appears to actually respond to structural demands in
the economy.
One interesting null finding was that the ideology of the governing party does not
matter on determining policy towards either type of immigrant. This provides strong
validation for the hypothesis that Left parties are no “softer” on accepting new immigrants
than Right parties, though they may certainly take a more liberal line towards already-
resident immigrants (Money, 1999; Givens and Luedtke, 2005).
The finding that ideology does not matter contrasts interestingly with our finding that
governing party preferences towards immigrants do matter (most strongly in the case of
asylum-seekers). As governing parties’ positive mentions of minorities in their manifestoes
increase by one percent, the number of asylum-seekers admitted goes up by 12 percent. This
provides strong validation for the theories of political party competition which hold that
parties are policy-seeking, and that they follow through on their platforms irrespective of
ideological “coloring” (Müller and Strøm, 2004).
Finally, our strange finding that increases in world refugee numbers significantly
increase numbers of foreign workers admitted to the developed world, but do not increase
numbers of asylum-seekers, also begs explaining. In the little space we have here, we can
only speculate that most genuine refugees may not actually take the route of political asylum,
but instead might prefer to seek work abroad.
They might see this as a safer and more
efficient means to better their economic prospects (and to move away from danger in the
process). By contrast, this might imply that many asylum-seekers are not genuine “refugees”,
in the strict Geneva Convention sense of the term, since their numbers do not appear to
correlate with world refugee flows.
Conclusion
19
Convention