be political refugees because they are aware of the sympathy extended by the populations in the developed countries to such claimants. Populations in the developed countries are much less sympathetic ù often hostile ù to economic transnational migrants (Fix & Passel, 1998).
For individuals, transnational migration is a means of escaping from a place they do not want to be or from conditions that they no longer want to abide to a new place that they hope is better. Unfortunately, the reality is often different from the hope. For the losing society, transnational migration often robs it of some of its best and most innovative minds. In turn, a receiving society often benefits from such transnational migration. For some losing nations, transnational migration often is a way to ridding the country of troublemakers. For some receiving nations, transnational migration also translates into trouble in the form of increasing social conflict (Borjas, Freeman, & Katz, 1997).
In the recent past, the flow of migrants has been enormously beneficial to the economic development of destination countries such as the United States, and the internal resources of immigrant communities have been important determinants of their success in their adopted countries, even under adverse circumstances. In the contemporary period, however, some people suggest that government benefits in industrial societies are making the absorption of immigrants more costly. Further, the historical role immigrants played in transferring technology and spreading skills and manpower from areas of abundance to areas of scarcity, according to Thomas Sowell (1995) is ending.
Those countries with the most human capital to contribute to the rest of the world have tended to send fewer and fewer emigrants abroad. à Many refugees have no such human capital, and refugees à in the late twentieth century tend to stay on welfare longer than either à citizens or other kind...