I deal with the occasional high level fencer from other countries, I deal with a lot of college students from other countries. Academically many of these kids are far more advanced than many of our domestic students. They graduate from our top universities and the best of them get hired by a US based company, which tries to get them a path to citizenship, thru the green card process. These are kids that 1) are highly trained/educated in sciences, 2) are following our immigration rules, 3) can actually contribute to our national economy and national strength, 4) are NOT a drain on our welfare/social systems and yet, many of them are denied green cards and are forced to leave the country after roughly 5 years of employment here.
I am all for reforming our LEGAL immigration system. It is NOT, in my mind, a political issue. It is a SURVIVAL issue. Without the addition to our national "brain" trust, our country would be poorer, less innovative and less competitive.
www.forbes.com
FULL STORY AT FORBES link above ^^^
I am all for reforming our LEGAL immigration system. It is NOT, in my mind, a political issue. It is a SURVIVAL issue. Without the addition to our national "brain" trust, our country would be poorer, less innovative and less competitive.
National Academy Calls For More Immigrant Visas, No Per-Country Limit
In a new report, NAS warns policymakers that America cannot retain top talent without changes to the U.S. immigration system.
www.forbes.com
National Academy Calls For More Immigrant Visas, No Per-Country Limit
Stuart AndersonSep 3, 2024,
Stuart Anderson writes about immigration, business and globalization.
The statue of scientist Albert Einstein on the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences. In a new ... [+]
AFP via Getty Images
In a new report, the National Academy of Sciences warns policymakers that America cannot retain top talent without changes to the U.S. immigration system. The NAS committee of scientists, professors and national security experts recommends that Congress add employment-based green cards, end the per-country limit for high-skilled immigrant visas and expand the domestic pipeline in science and engineering. The report, authorized by the Defense Department following a Congressional directive, describes a “fierce” global competition for high-skilled labor. NAS concludes that talent programs in China and countries with more liberalized immigration policies threaten America’s ability to attract and retain talented foreign-born scientists and engineers.
The Most Significant Recommendation: More Green Cards
The report makes many recommendations that analysts would consider sensible, but the most significant involves changing U.S. immigration law to admit more highly skilled immigrants.
“The legislative branch should create easily navigable pathways to permanent residency and citizenship for qualified foreign-born STEM talent,” according to the NAS report. “As an immediate priority, Congress should empower government agencies to identify critical areas of science, technology and engineering vital to their mission. Congress should then authorize additional Green Card numbers for qualified foreign-born experts who work in such areas, subject to normal due diligence.”
NAS recommends a new category for highly skilled permanent residents and states that the category “should not carry any per-country caps or be subject to existing numerical limitations.” The report adds, “Explicit eligibility for international STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] graduates of U.S. institutions should be included.”
In 2022, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives included a similar provision when it passed what became the CHIPS and Science Act. That legislation contained an exemption from annual green card limits for foreign nationals with a Ph.D. in STEM fields and those with a master’s degree “in a critical industry.” That would have helped future applicants and many individuals waiting in long backlogs. During a House-Senate conference on the bill, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), blocked the measures from becoming law.
Because of the low annual limit on employment-based immigrant visas and the per-country limit, over one million Indians, including dependents, now wait in the first, second and third employment-based green card categories, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis of USCIS data.
The United States is losing talent because of the annual limits on H-1B and employment-based immigrant visas, said Mark Barteau, the NAS committee’s chair, in public remarks broadcast on August 29, 2024. He noted that under the current U.S. immigration system, H-1B visas have become a primary “retention instrument.”
Without obtaining H-1B status, an international student is unlikely to stay and work long-term in the United States. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services typically selects only about 25% of H-1B applicants or registrants yearly. That is because the annual limit on new H-1B petitions is 65,000, plus an exemption of 20,000 for graduate degree holders from U.S. universities, representing just 0.05% of the U.S. labor force.
Barteau echoed a conclusion from the report: “The permissiveness of visa policies is the first determining factor in how a country’s institutions can benefit readily from international talent.”
Research On The Benefits Of Admitting Immigrant Scientists And Engineers
The report highlighted studies documenting the benefits of admitting foreign-born scientists and engineers. NAS highlighted National Foundation for American Policy research that showed more than 55% of the country’s $1 billion startup companies had at least one immigrant founder (I authored the study and testified before the NAS committee) and that immigrants have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics since 2000.
An NFAP study cited in the report by University of North Florida economics professor Madeline Zavodny concluded, “the presence of H-1B visa holders is associated with lower unemployment rates and faster earnings growth among college graduates.” The NAS report cited another NFAP study by Zavodny that “found that every 10 bachelor’s degrees awarded across all STEM fields to international students lead to an additional 15 bachelor’s degrees in STEM majors awarded to U.S. students.”
NAS pointed to research by Britta Glennon, an assistant professor at the Wharton UPENN, that “shows that H-1B restrictions and the inability of companies to hire a sufficient number of high-skilled workers in the United States results in offshoring tech jobs and reducing R&D investment in the United States and leads companies to send more jobs, resources, and innovations outside the United States.”
The report cited to a study by Rasha Ashraf (Georgia State) and Rina Ray (University of Colorado at Denver) that found “increases in the number of H-1B admissions led to increased worker productivity and company profits, especially in companies that conduct R&D,” with patents decreasing in companies “dependent on skilled immigrant” professionals after Congress allowed the H-1B annual limit to decline in 2004. An NAS-commissioned paper by Jeremy Neufeld (Institute for Progress) and Divyansh Kaushik (Federation of American Scientists) “shows the important role international talent plays in the U.S. research enterprise and in the U.S. skilled workforce and highlight the scale of talent flows through major immigration programs.”
China’s Talent Programs And The China Initiative
The report spotlights the challenges presented by China’s government programs to attract talent. NAS cited research by Jeffrey Stoff that found “The Changjiang Scholars, Hundred Talents and Thousand Talents programs have had notable success recruiting world-class experts who have made significant contributions to China’s S&T development” and that “These talent programs were foundational to a monumental policy shift that recognized that human capital investment was key to China’s S&T development.”
While viewing China as a competitor, the NAS report labeled the Trump administration’s “China Initiative” counterproductive. . .
Additional Recommendations
In addition to recommending Congress issue more green cards for highly skilled immigrants, NAS urged a more significant role for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, part of the White House. NAS urged OSTP to “oversee the coordination of a whole-of-government talent strategy including national talent recruitment and retention approaches for international researchers at all levels of experience to be implemented by federal departments and agencies.”
NAS recommended all levels of government “take a forward-looking, proactive approach to developing the nation’s domestic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics talent.” . . .
“Some of the nation’s most important advantages in attracting and retaining talent are the intangibles: values, freedom, and opportunity,” according to NAS. “This makes these advantages particularly vulnerable to changes in perception of the United States as an open and welcoming environment for foreign researchers.”
While the committee believes U.S.-born individuals should be encouraged to enter STEM fields. . .
