International Organization for Migration (IOM)

hardly reflecting actual labour market needs, the uncertainty about the annual planning
of flows and on the length of the immigration procedure required to admit a worker
from abroad, together with the existence of a large pool of irregular immigrants in the
country and the cyclical regularization programmes, are all migration policy-related
elements which, in the Italian case, concur to explain the disconnection between the
actual labour market information strategies mobilized by employers and migrants for
jobs-skills matching, and the legal framework for economic migration (Chapter 7).
It has to be noticed, however, that some distinctive features in the demand for migrant
workers in Italy – such as the important demand for migrant workers to fill domestic
and care occupations in private households, see infra section 4.1 – and the salient
characteristics of the Italian industrial structure (predominance of micro-enterprises)
and labour market (extension of the informal labour market), also contribute to the
peculiar migration and labour market information patterns observed in the country.
Findings from the country study on Poland also suggest some caution against
attributing a preponderant contribution to shaping patterns of access to labour market
information for employers and migrants to the failure of migration policy in effectively
addressing labour shortages. The study reports that, despite a significant liberalization
and simplification of the legislation concerning the employment of foreigners since
2007, and the consequent increased awareness of employers about formal migrants’
recruitment channels, informal and irregular practices persist (Chapter 8).
Notwithstanding this caveat, uncertainties on the labour migration process, both in
terms of the annual planning of flows and of the length of time required to obtain
a work permit for a migrant worker, represent a major constraint, particularly for
SMEs. The study found that these shortcomings limit the recourse to migrant
recruitment in response to labour shortages and to have an impact on patterns of
access to labour market information for employers and migrants. In general, complex
administrative procedures, red tape, and paperwork burden disproportionately affect
SMEs compared with bigger firms, due to resource restrictions. Thus, bureaucratic
delays associated with the process of migrant recruitment – due to shortcomings in
the design and implementation of the labour migration system – can translate into
significant income losses for SMEs. Consistently across the countries studied it was
observed that cumbersome and lengthy immigration procedures are among the main
factors which discourage SMEs from lawfully recruiting from abroad in response to
their labour needs, particularly if such needs are temporary. In the United States, the
H-2A visa for seasonal workers in agriculture is one of the only two legal migration
routes allowing for the admission of low-skilled migrants, and this despite persistent
and growing shortages in low-skilled occupations 8 . Although the H-2A stream is
8 Since the late 1980s a polarization of labour demand at the two ends of the skills spectrum has been
observed in the United States. In particular, shortages in low-skilled occupations in the service sectors
(and especially in health care and personal care) are prospected to grow in the short- to medium-term.
However, legal labour migration streams in the United States are mostly reserved to highly skilled workers.
This restrictive labour migration policy, not responsive to the actual economic needs, has contributed to
the large pool of undocumented migrants living in the United States and available for recruitment. A
detailed discussion of the United States labour migration policy is provided in Chapter 12.
eXecutIve summAry – SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
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