The Politics of Immigration: Dictatorship, Development, and Defense

Contemporary immigration policy choices are puzzling. Although people prefer living in a democracy, there is large-scale migration into rich dictatorships. We live in an age of globalization, but most countries regulate and restrict immigration. It is widely ac cepted that free trade is beneficial and states have formed international organizations, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), in order to remove barriers to trade. But no equivalent of the WTO exists in the realm of immigration, and international law does not recognize the right to enter another country. Furthermore, immigration policies are more restrictive now than in prior historical periods. Despite the importance and puzzling nature of immigration outcomes, key aspects of immigration policymaking are understudied. The literature has overstated the extent to which international and domestic norms and supposed economic and/or demographic necessities constrain immigration policymaking. Within international political economy, migration is studied much less than trade. Until recently, international security scholars have tended not to examine the links between security and migration. Comparative politics scholars usually examine the immigration policies of western democracies while largely ignoring immigration policymaking under dictatorship. The conventional wisdom is that democracies adopt liberal immigration policies and that immigrants, especially since the 9/11 attacks, are regarded as potential security liabilities. But the opposite should be expected?that dictatorship and large-scale security threats, along with economic development, increase immigration. This theoretical proposition explains both contemporary cross-national variation in and the macrohistorical patterns of im migration policymaking. The statistical findings presented in this article are original because large-n, cross-national testing has been rare in the immigration literature.