Given controversies and acrimonious debates surrounding the issue of permanent
migration, GATS Mode 4 thus should come as a great advantage for both labor-sending
and receiving countries. The temporariness of migration saves the host country
government the costs of providing social safety nets to foreign workers. Since foreign
workers need not to fully integrate themselves into the host country, potential
socio-cultural tensions would be relatively lower than under the permanent migration.
Temporariness of foreign labor movement also allows the host country to adjust its
short-term migrant employment contracts to its domestic employment conditions and
officially restrict access to welfare state benefits.
Mode 4 should also be advantageous for labor-sending countries as remittances are
usually much larger for migrants who intend to return home. As migrants’ families
stay home, there is a greater chance that they will return home. Migrants may also
return home for other reasons, such as:
. they may have made their initial decision to emigrate on the basis of erroneous
information (Borjas and Bratsberg, 1996);
. return migration may also have been planned as part of an optimal life-cycle
relocation sequence (Djajic and Milbourne, 2002); and
. when they can freely choose their location and length of stay abroad, some
migrants may rationally choose to return after a temporary emigration (Dos
Santos and Postel-Vinay, 2003).
Moreover, as migrants return home, it is less of a brain drain and more of a brain gain
for developing countries[16].