Destination countries are increasingly adopting selective immigration policies. These can effectively increase migrants' average education even if one allows for endogenous schooling decisions and education policies at origin. Still, more selective immigration policies can reduce social welfare...

We analyze the pattern of migrants' self-selection in unobservables when there is uncertainty about foreign wages. Negative selection becomes more likely, and a greater dispersion of wages at destination no longer suffices to predict that immigrants will outperform natives.