The rhetoric of closed borders : quotas , lax enforcement and illegal migration ∗

Despite restrictive migration policies, large numbers of undocumented migrants reside in many destination countries. If official migration targets are not enforced, why are they devised? To address this puzzle, we develop a political agency model with uncertainty about the supply of migrants, where an elected official can either have preferences congruent with the majority of his electorate, or desire a larger number of migrants. In the latter scenario we show that the incumbent might find it optimal to set a binding migration quota to be re-elected, and strategically relax its enforcement, or choose an ineffective instrument like border control. JEL classification: F22, J61.