Community-sponsored work visas
Communities should have more power over local immigration decisions
This is an adaptation of some old writing of mine.
I’m a fan of open borders, but politically, it seems like it will be hard to free up movement restrictions in the near term. Instead, I want to highlight a policy tool that can achieve many of the benefits of open borders while being more politically feasible.
Simply, it involves visas where recipients have work and reside in a certain area, sponsored by their local community. Each locality gets to choose how many total workers to allow while getting a large share of the tax revenue from these new workers. These visas should be additional allowances that states and cities can grant to immigrants; they shouldn’t subtract from existing immigration to a country.
The rest of the implementation details can be left to the citizens of a region. It’s critical that each location has strong control over visa approvals and has their own processes for approving such visas. I suspect that giving communities more control over these decisions will make citizens feel less threatened and increase immigration overall.
By giving localities a share of the tax revenue, they will see direct benefits from allowing immigration and can use the revenue provide assistance to citizens displaced by a changing labor market. Because of the local economic gains from bringing in more workers, community-sponsored work visas can induce beneficial competition between cities, ensuring that they provide a good place to live and work.
To sharpen competition between communities, it’s valuable for workers to live where they’re hired. This ensures that their spending goes back to the community and creates more “skin-in-the-game” when choosing a place to work. It also reduces spillover effects on nearby communities that may prefer less immigration.
Will this competition lead to dramatic increases in immigration as cities “race to the bottom” by importing more workers? I doubt it, most towns in rich countries are quite conservative about accepting migrants, even in places where citizens express pro-immigration attitudes.
What about the opposite problem, does giving people local control over immigration just bring NIMBY to immigration decisions? Perhaps, but this is certainly an improvement over the current situation where central governments restrict immigration while providing no recourse to communities that actually want more workers.
Community-sponsored work visas are something policymakers should consider, as they can reap economic benefits, increase regional control over immigration choices, and create beneficial competition between local governments. A wealthy country like the U.S. could profitably implement such a system and then incorporate localized work visas into international trade agreements, helping reduce barriers to movement across the world.
Further reading
Posner and Weyl’s hosting program from the book Radical Markets.
The Community Visa: A Local Solution to America’s Immigration Deadlock
Immigration at the State Level: An Examination of Proposed State-Based Visa Programs in the U.S.
Neat idea, but I think the problem is going to be that it is difficult, if not counterproductive, to limit immigrants to living in one part of a country. This seems like an issue that needs national/Federal oversight and cannot be handled locally.
I have suggested simply selling entry visas (subject to background and health checks) with the price varying by age. Older immigrants would need to pay more. I outline my rationale for this here: https://www.lianeon.org/p/toward-an-optimal-immigration-system
In the early days of the American Republic there wasn't any federal level immigration restrictions. They were all imposed at the state level. Kind of like the modern EU. individual EU countries can issue their own visas but with free movement, it's very difficult to enforce region specific work permits. People just get a visa for Poland and then migrate into Germany for work.