10.3 - Immigration and Emigration

How to Optimize Your Immigration Pattern

The immigration office can be micro-managed to optimize immigrants influx and minimize emigrants outflux. By setting your IM option to 'No One Leaves Alive', emigration can be stopped. When the first ship of the year is about to dock, you can switch the option over to 'Skilled Workers Welcome' to gain skilled workers. And then switch the option back to 'No One Leaves Alive'. When the next ship is about to dock, switch the option to 'Open-door Immigration' and you will gain unskilled workers. (If you switch to 'Skilled Workers Welcome' at this point, you will unlikely have any immigrants at all.)

This strategy will allow you to maximize the quality and number of immigrants, and minimize your emigration rate. It is like having your cake, your bread, and your tart and eating them too.

I do a variant.  Skilled Workers Welcome setting is great for getting them in early game, especially before you can really afford the school and college.  It's faster afterwards too, than waiting for people to "graduate".

 The Tropico First setting has the advantage of not allowing many, if any, immigrants  in (which are not always desirable to have), but still allows disgruntled people to emigrate.  Depending on what you want to see happen in your game Tropico First may be the preferred choice to let those troublemakers out without letting in more foreigners to house, find jobs for, etc.

 If you just want to keep everyone locked in the country no matter how they feel about it then use Nobody Gets Out Alive. Of course anyone desiring this option probably shouldn't be too surprised when a rebel or two starts popping up.  May be the whole idea.

 I started playing with the options on the immigration office when I felt that my populations were getting too big too soon for my struggling economy.