Undocumented Migration to the United States: Can the Flow be Stemmed?

The phenomenon of international migration is hardly one of recent origin. Modern history has recoreded large movements of population, not the least of which was the mass migration of Europeans to the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the literature on migration reflects a broad understanding of the forces that give rise to population movements, much less is kown about measures that can be taken to influence or control the size of migratory flows. Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of attempts by the advanced industrial countries of Western Europe and North America to contain or inhibit the flow of migrants, particularly that of undocumented migrants. The literature on the subject suggests that these attempts have met with only partial success. This paper represents a review of the present state of knowledge regarding the measures that may be taken to influence the flow of undocumented workers to the United States.Latin American and Iberian Institut