Immigrants’ prior in-country experience as a signal

In countries that select immigrants based on skills, a growing policy trend favours applicants with prior experience in their intended destination. Canada, for example, gives a premium to prospective immigrants with substantial in-country work experience or postsecondary education. These policies, often labelled as ‘two-step migration’ streams, are popular by governments because they predict good economic integration outcomes. This article explores whether the public shares decision-makers’ enthusiasm by asking: do citizens prefer prospective immigrants with prior in-country experience? Drawing on research on attitudes towards skilled migration and statistical discrimination, we hypothesise that prior in-country experience functions as signalling from trusted institutions, reducing citizens’ uncertainty about immigrants’ qualifications and future behaviours. We test this via a survey experiment with 5557 Canadian respondents that varies attributes of immigration candidates, including different types of prior in-country experience. We confirm a clear preference for candidates with previous experience in Canada and find that this effect is larger for respondents with more negative views about immigration. These findings suggest that communication about prior in-country experiences could become part of the toolkit to increase support for immigration.