Since the early 1980s, unauthorized immigration has increased in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, a function of renewed economic growth coupled with severe restrictions on new legal immigration. Millions of illegal aliens have migrated to these countries. In Western Europe, international labor migration is largely unregulated. In the United States, the 1986 U.S. Immigration Reform and Control Act has not only failed to deter much new unauthorized immigration and to increase the propensity of illegal aliens already in the country to depart, but has also stimulated additional illegal immigration. The European Economic Community have characterized immigration as "the big issue of the 1990s." This project is a comparative assessment of recent immigration flows, public policies to reduce unauthorized immigration, and the outcomes of these policies in advanced industrial or post- industrial societies. A systematic examination of the experiences of advanced industrial nations (United States, Canada, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, and Japan) in attempting to gain control over illegal immigration from less developed countries and regions (primarily Mexicao, North Africa, Turkey, Eastern Europe, the Philippines and Bangladesh) will be conducted. Alternative theories and explanations for the persistence of low-skilled immigration and for the limited efficacy of immigration control measures in labor-importing countries will be evaluated. Activities will include the formation of a multidisciplinary research group consisting of seven immigration specialists (representing sociology, economics, political science, anthropology, and history) from various universities who will conduct primary data collection. These researchers and other leading immigration specialists from other industrialized countries will meet in 1993 for a workshop to discuss the work. The results of this study will have significant value for scientific and policy analyses of international labor migration. In addition, the research has both transnational and international theoretical implications relating to other issues in the sociolegal field such as the limits of law as a regulatory mechanism, the problems of implementation, and the relationship of public attitudes to legal outcomes and effectiveness.
