Immigration Policy and Terrorism: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

Though populist politicians deem the terrorist threat as a reason for restrictive immigration policies, existing studies neglect to explore the systematic connection between immigration and security. This study offers a novel theoretical argument about the effect of terrorism on immigration policy and then conducts a first-cut empirical analysis. Based on a battery of statistical tests performed against pooled panel data on immigrant-receiving countries that are attractive to low-skilled workers due to high wages, this study shows evidence that terrorist threats are actually unrelated to restrictive immigration policies.
KEYWORDS:

• Immigration policy
• terrorism
• economic causes
• scapegoating
• populism

Description