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I. Introduction
Political debates over immigration policy have been rising in volume and intensity in recent years
in almost all western economies. On the one hand, immigration is seen by many as an economic and
cultural lifeline that can supply firms in key industries with skilled workers, relieve strains on tax-funded
pension systems threatened by the graying of the local population, and inject new artistic and intellectual
life into the nation. On the other hand, there are concerns that immigrants may take jobs away from local
workers, subtract more from the government in the form of social services than they give back in taxes,
and create ethnic enclaves that balkanize the nation, undermine traditional culture, and lead to crime and
other social ills. These latter concerns have encouraged the recent imposition of much tighter immigration
controls in several countries while also nurturing the growth of extremist anti-immigrant political
movements in many parts of Europe and increasing the incidence of hate crimes directed toward
immigrants. The debate seems certain to continue in the years ahead, and grow fiercer.
A great deal of new research has examined survey data on individual attitudes toward
immigration, focusing on the determinants of anti-immigration sentiments (e.g., Gang and Rivera-Batiz
1994b; Citrin et al. 1997; Dustmann and Preston 2001). Some of the most recent and prominent studies
have concluded that realistic fears about the economic effects of labor market competition among low
skilled, blue-collar workers lie at the heart of much anti-immigration feeling (e.g., Scheve and Slaughter
2001a, 2001b; Kessler 2001; Mayda 2004). These studies all rest their analysis upon economic models of
the distributive effects of immigration anticipating that low-skilled (i.e. less-educated) native workers will
lose out when forced to compete for jobs with low-skilled immigrants (see Borjas 1999a, 1999b). The key
supporting evidence for their claims is that opposition to immigration among survey respondents in
OECD nations is negatively and significantly associated with individual levels of educational attainment.
Viewed from this perspective, the immigration debate is largely about economics, and the primary battle
line is the one that separates high-skilled and low-skilled workers.
But this account does not fit well with the growing body of evidence, available from a variety of
studies of European and American labor markets, showing that the effects of immigration flows on
Convention