Does illegal immigration empower rightist parties? Solano-García, Ángel Illegal immigration Ideological parties Unskilled and skilled The main goal of this paper is to analyze the political outcome in countries where the relevant issue in elections is the control of immigration. In particular we explore the consequences on the political outcome of the fact that parties are either ideological or opportunistic with respect to this issue. In order to do that we use a simple two-party political competition model in which the issues over which parties take positions are the level of border enforcement and the way it has to be financed. We show that an ideological rather than a pure opportunistic behavior gives parties an advantage to win the election. This result may help us to understand the recent success of anti-immigrant and rightist parties in several countries. 2014-04-30T09:30:28Z 2014-04-30T09:30:28Z 2006 info:eu-repo/semantics/report Solano-García, A. Does illegal immigration empower rightist parties?. Universidad de Granada. Departamento de Teoría e Historia Económica (2006). (The Papers; 06/02). [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/31485] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/31485 eng The Papers;06/02 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License Universidad de Granada. Departamento de Teoría e Historia Económica