Create a market for immigration - Becker-Posner

Free immigration? Quotas? Becker and Posner debate the alternatives, centering around this statement by Becker:

Given these realities of free immigration, the best alternative to the present quota system is an ancient way of allocating a scarce and popular good; namely, by charging a price that clears the market. That is why I believe countries should sell the right to immigrate, especially the United States that has so many persons waiting to immigrate.

They never come out and say what the objective is -- for example, is it to lift per capita income in the receiving country? See my earlier post on Saudi citizenship policy.

In the Emirates, immigration hinges on whether you have an employer sponsor. And nationals have to have a stake in any company operating in country. What's happened? The core business of many sponsoring companies is bringing in people and turning them loose on the local economy to work for themselves. Such a firm's revenues come from its workers who pay the sponsoring company a fee to enter the country, and plus annual fee to remain in good standing with the sponsor (who could otherwise report them for absconding).

This is much like Becker's suggestion of a market for immigration. The main difference I see is that under his suggestion the government would be the monopoly provider. In the Emirates there is close to free entry (by nationals) into immigration provision.