1 Introduction
Employers in developed countries are often thought to benefit from labor
immigration. If this were in fact the case, we would expect them to be
more supportive of immigration than the rest. The literature on individual
attitudes toward immigration has not paid attention to employers so far.
This paper attempts to fill this gap. We examine the data on individuals
in the European Union member states from Round 1 of the European Social
Survey (ESS hereafter) that was conducted during the pre-2004 enlargement
period.
The view that immigration is economically beneficial for employers is very
common. For instance, Richard Layard at London School of Economics
wrote a couple of years before the enlargement, “For European employers
..., unskilled immigration brings real advantages. It provides labour for
their restaurants, building sites and car parks and helps to keep these ser-
vices cheap by keeping down the wages of those who work there.”1 See also
Solé and Parella (2003) who describe why employers would prefer immigrant
workers to native workers in Spain.
While this economic logic makes us believe that employers are in favor of
more liberal labor immigration, it has not been empirically examined whether
or not the status of being an employer makes a difference in terms of pref-
erences for immigration restriction. The literature on individual attitudes
toward immigration has so far examined two channels through which immi-
gration is thought to affect people economically in the host countries. One is
1A letter to Financial Times “Conflict between Europe and immigrant workers” pub-
lished on 15 May 2002