Ignoring immigration is ignoring the future

By Neeraj Salhotra     11/4/10 7:00pm

There is often much discussion about U.S. immigration policy; however, the discourse invariably focuses on illegal immigration and, of late, the Arizona immigration law. While both of these issues are worth debate, I will focus on another, less mainstream yet vitally important facet of the immigration issue: visa quotas for highly skilled workers.The U.S. has always been a haven for the brightest minds - Albert Einstein, Ieoh Ming Pei and Vinod Khosla, to name a few. The world's greatest students view U.S. universities as among the best in the world. This mindset annually empowers more than 500,000 foreign-born students to travel thousands of miles to attend American universities.

This system of foreign-born students settling down in the U.S. after completing their studies has provided huge economic benefits. Professors at Duke University and the University of California at Berkeley found that in 2005, immigrant-founded companies generated $52 billion in revenue and employed more than 450,000 workers. Moreover, as Darrell West of the Brookings Institution notes, "Since over 50 percent of immigrants are ages 25-44, they are more likely to be taxpayers than to require public services. They are also more likely to become home owners and pay property taxes."

In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits - they are on average a cash-flow for the government. My point is simple: Immigrants, specifically highly skilled immigrants, have substantial positive economic benefits through job creation, GDP increase and tax payments.

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More than direct economic benefits, immigrants also help the U.S. in other areas. One such important arena is in patent application filings. According to some estimates, more than 24 percent of U.S. patents are filed by foreign-born people living in the U.S. Also, based on research from the World Bank, increasing foreign-born graduates of U.S. institutions can increase patent applications by almost 5 percent. Said differently, without a sizable population of highly skilled immigrants, U.S. patent filings and, by extension, U.S. innovation in science and technology, will substantially decline. Because of the economic benefits coupled with the patent application filings, among other things, the U.S. has experienced a "Brain Gain."

Highly skilled immigrants engender positive economic impacts. However, one must ask: What has happened to the U.S. immigration policy in the past decade? Simply put, the U.S. has taken several strides in the wrong direction. In the post-9/11 world, the U.S. has made it difficult for foreigners to obtain visas. As New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "After 9/11, we went from reaching out and trying to get the best and brightest to come here, to trying to keep them out." The Patriot Act has specifically hurt businesses seeking to sponsor highly skilled immigrants for the H1-B visa. While immigrants can still obtain student visas (albeit with some difficulty), H1-B visa quotas have decreased from a high of 195,000 in 2001 to 65,000 in 2004. In other words, the U.S. is content to spend millions of dollars educating immigrants and then to force them back to their own countries. Many students are doing just that - coming to the U.S. for education only to settle down in their own home country. Recently, the U.S. has experienced a Brain Drain.

As was made clear by China's recent passage of the U.S. in patent application filings, U.S. immigration policy toward highly skilled workers must be reformed. The solution to the U.S. problem is quite obvious: Expand the quota for H1-B visas. Opposition to such policy changes stems from two erroneous beliefs: that immigrants take jobs from Americans and depress wages. According to numerous studies, immigrants increase wages for Americans and actually create, rather than take, jobs since many immigrants work in occupations Americans are either unable or unwilling to accept.

One option for improving immigration policy is to implement a point system similar to what Canada uses. Such a system awards immigrants points based on education, work experience and age. Once they reach a certain threshold, immigrants are granted a visa. West suggests another initiative: automatically granting green cards to those who complete master's or doctoral degrees in science, engineering or mathematics. These individuals will both help America maintain its lead in technological innovation and contribute positively to the American economy. The U.S. has reached an inflection point; one option is to restrict immigration out of unfounded fears, the other is to encourage immigrants to settle within our borders because it is means to prosperity.

America must, and I am confident we will, choose the latter.

Neeraj Salhotra is a Sid Richardson College sophomore.

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