Challenges selecting ‘desirable’ migrants: A case study of immigrant investor programmes in the United Kingdom and the United States

Abstract While many policymakers want to market their countries as desirable destinations for the ‘brightest and best’, implementing policies to attract and select such migrants is no easy matter. This article explores the challenges policymakers face when designing and implementing policies to attract and admit ‘desirable’ migrants, using the UK and US immigrant investor programmes as a case study. Drawing from targeting and screening theories in public policy, this study identifies some unavoidable challenges. First, policymakers face a trade-off between two types of selection errors: erroneously admitting applicants whom policymakers do not consider desirable and excluding those they do. How they resolve these trade-offs will depend on the perceived social, economic, and political costs of being under- or over-inclusive, respectively. The problems of selection errors will be greater when the characteristics they seek are either rare or difficult to define in transparent selection criteria. Second, policymakers will face a trade-off between the information they can gather to determine whether applicants meet their vision of the desirable migrant and the risk of deterring applicants because the programme conditions are too onerous. I argue that these selection challenges are a distinct subset of immigration policy failure that existing theories can shed some light on but do not sufficiently explain on their own.