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Title page of the Law Library's report "Immigration agency funding mechanisms in selected OECD countries."

Law Library’s New Report Reviews Immigration Agency Funding Mechanisms in Selected OECD Countries

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This is a guest post by Kayahan Cantekin, a foreign law specialist in the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress.

We are proud to announce that our new multi-jurisdiction report on mechanisms employed to fund immigration agencies in selected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries is now available on law.gov. The report includes surveys of 34 OECD-member jurisdictions, observing how they fund their government agencies responsible for administering immigration. The surveys include information on whether the jurisdictions employ mechanisms that allow immigration agencies to use the service fees and other charges they collect while providing immigration-related services to fund their operations. The report found that while some jurisdictions employ such mechanisms, in the majority of the jurisdictions, the agencies are funded solely through ordinary appropriations in state budgets.

Agency self-funding mechanisms

The report found that out of the 34 jurisdictions surveyed, eight have adopted funding mechanisms that earmark the funds collected by immigration agencies as service fees and other charges to be used for the agency’s own activities. Such funding mechanisms set up in these jurisdictions differ from each other in various aspects. For example, while some jurisdictions allow immigration agencies to collect fees and charges in special agency accounts, in others, the money must be remitted to the Treasury once collected by the agency while remaining earmarked for the agency’s use.

This report is an addition to the Law Library’s Legal Reports (Publications of the Law Library of Congress) collection, which includes over 3,000 historical and contemporary legal reports covering a variety of jurisdictions, researched and written by foreign law specialists with expertise in each area.

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