Comment by _heimdall

I totally agree that there are two extremes to the idea and neither are realistic. A market doesn't have to be completely free of regulation to be considered free.

There's a balance though, and as heavily regulated as immigration is I just don't see how it could fall into the range of being a roughly free market. Work-based immigration into the US specifically is heavily regulated and there are a lot of blocks in the way making it infeasible or impossible for one to take part in it.

I mean that on both sides too, both employers and potential employees are heavily burdened by the process and often they just can't take part in the process for any number of regulatory reasons.