Employing Skilled Expatriates : Benchmarking Skilled Immigration Regimes across Economies
The Employing Skilled Expatriates indicators analyze the skilled immigration regime relevant for foreign direct investment across 93 economies to provide comparable information about this regulatory space. The indicators focus on restrictions that...
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/11/18524119/employing-skilled-expatriates-benchmarking-skilled-immigration-regimes-across-economies http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16905 |
| Summary: | The Employing Skilled Expatriates
indicators analyze the skilled immigration regime relevant
for foreign direct investment across 93 economies to provide
comparable information about this regulatory space. The
indicators focus on restrictions that control the inflow of
skilled immigrants (quotas); the ease of hiring skilled
expatriates (time and procedural steps to obtain a temporary
work permit, existence of online application systems,
availability of a one-stop shop and fast-tracking option);
and the existence of a path to permanent residency and
citizenship as well as the existence of spousal work
permits. As governments increasingly seek to attract foreign
direct investment as a driver of long-term development,
reforming the investment climate -- including the skilled
immigration regime -- is one policy option to consider. This
analysis shows a positive correlation between the Employing
Skilled Expatriates index and foreign direct investment
inflows. As measured by the Employing Skilled Expatriates
index, there is room for economies with a need for skilled
workers to improve their immigration regimes as one means of
attracting more foreign direct investment. In Singapore and
the Republic of Korea, it only takes ten days on average to
obtain a temporary work permit. In Honduras, the same
process can take up to 22 weeks. The global average to
obtain a temporary work permit is eight weeks. The process
is the fastest in the East Asia and the Pacific region where
it takes five weeks. With 11 weeks, the processing time in
the Middle East and North Africa region is the slowest. |
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