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18 Const. Pol. Econ. 1 (2007)

handle is hein.journals/constpe18 and id is 1 raw text is: Constit Polit Econ (2007) 18:1-20 DOI 10.1007/s10602-006-9009-6 (>l l(, k \ I IC IQ » Constitutional choice and European immigration policy Gabriele Orcalli Published online: 5 November 2006 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2006 Abstract The EU's immigration policy is evaluated from the standpoint of constitutional economics. The main conclusion is that European immigration policy is trapped in a system of constitutional regulations that is too rigid as it is exclusively oriented towards the protection and securitisation of European borders. As such, it is not capable of allowing the development of a problem- solving capacity based on successive trials, and this produces negative outcomes for the whole of the EU. Keywords Immigration - Constitutional choice JEL Classification F22 1 Introduction Governments normally oppose the free movement of people and, in partic- ular, free immigration. The reason for this negative stance towards the free movement of people can be explained, according to standard economic the- ory, by the limited evidence of the benefits of immigration: the net economic advantages estimated so far appear few and unevenly distributed across the population, and also outweighed by the economic costs the impact of the immigrants on the welfare of the residents and the social costs the impact of immigrants on the customs and lifestyles of the residents both of which are considerable. G. Orcalli (E) Department of Economics, University of Padua, Via del Santo 33, 35123 Padova, Italy e-mail: gabriele.orcalli@unipd.it G. Orcalli CERC, Contemporary Europe Research Center, University of Melbourne, Australia I_ Springer