Image Source: Pixabay
 

Lee Kwan Yew, who was the first Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990, and laid the groundwork for Singapore’s remarkable rise to becoming a high-income country, was once asked by political scientist Joseph Nye about the future of competition between the United States and China. As Nye wrote in a 2011 article:

Some observers worry that America will become sclerotic like Britain, at the peak of its power a century ago. But American culture is far more entrepreneurial and decentralized than was that of Britain, where the sons of industrial entrepreneurs sought aristocratic titles and honors in London. And despite recurrent historical bouts of concern, immigration helps keep America flexible. In 2005, foreign-born immigrants had participated in one of every four technology start-ups in the previous decade. As Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew once told me, China can draw on a talent pool of 1.3 billion people, but the United States can draw on a talent pool of 7 billion and recombine them in a diverse culture that enhances creativity in a way that ethnic Han nationalism cannot.

Lee Kwan Yew’s comment emphasizes that the economic future belongs to talent, and thus that historical US ability to be a home for developing talent from all over the world, as well as giving that talent space to be productive and rewarded, has historically been one of the greatest US economic advantages. Jeremy Neufeld explores the policy implications of that insight in “Aligning High-Skilled Immigration Policy with National Strategy,” written as a chapter for a forthcoming book by the Aspen Strategy Group on Advancing America’s Prosperity, edited by Melissa S. Kearney and Luke Pardue. Neufeld offers a vivid example:

Consider: mRNA vaccine technology was developed in the United States because biochemistry pioneer Katalin Karikó was allowed to come to the country in 1985, before the institution of rules in 1990 and 1998 that would have made it much less likely for her to have been able to successfully immigrate. In the years since, 5G was developed in China because Huawei was able to commercialize the research of Erdal Arikan, the Turkish scientist whose breakthroughs on polar codes provided the basis for the technology. Arikan was an international student who studied in the United States, graduating from the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He wanted to stay in the United States and only returned to Turkey when he could not secure a green card. Had he faced the immigration system that Karikó faced, he would be a proud American citizen today. Immigration policy thereby seeded a vaccine revolution. Today’s immigration policy exported 5G to Shenzhen.

Neufeld’s concern is that the US immigration system makes very little effort to attract talent. For example:

High-skilled immigration is not a central priority of America’s immigration system. The United States issues about a million green cards—the term for lawful permanent resident status—per year, affording immigrants the right to stay permanently in the United States and work if they choose to. Of those, only about 7 percent are awarded to people on the basis of their skills or job offers. The rest of the green cards go to other categories. The largest “major class” of immigrants are immediate relatives of US citizens, defined as the citizens’ spouses and minor children, for whom there is no limit on the number of green cards that may be issued each year. …

In addition to the numerical limit on each category, a per-country cap further limits the number of green cards that may be issued to nationals of any given country in a year. Thus, immigrants face different wait times depending on what country they are from. Indians face the longest expected wait times, stretching to over 100 years for EB-2s, meaning that approved petitions are unlikely to ever result in a green card. Chinese face the next longest waits. … The overwhelming majority of employment based green cards [that is, 7% of total green cards] go to people already lawfully present in the United States on another status, usually a temporary work visa like an H-1B. … In other words, employment-based green cards are the primary mechanism by which high-skilled immigrants can stay in the United States, but they are not a major recruitment tool for new talent.

Newfeld discusses in some detail the existing ways for skilled talent to come to the United States, and how those ways fall short.
 

I’ll sum up his argument by quoting from his abstract:

The United States’ innovation edge rests on its ability to draw on the best talent from around the world. Yet, the laws that govern high-skilled immigration have barely moved since 1990 for permanent residency and since 2000 for temporary work visas, leaving them misaligned with the size and needs of today’s economy. Employers register for more than three times as many H-1Bs as are available each year, which are then awarded at random rather than on the basis of merit. For permanent residency, just 140,000 employment-based green cards are issued annually, most of which go to spouses and children rather than to workers themselves. The resulting backlogs now exceed one million, leaving many workers stuck in less productive jobs and discouraging future talent from coming to the US altogether. This paper charts the alphabet soup of high-skilled immigration pathways—F-1/OPT, J-1, H-1B, O-1A, EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3—demonstrating how inflexible and outdated rules have undermined the scale, selectivity, and retention of global talent. It proposes reforms to make immigration a renewed national strength: expanding green cards, piloting a points based system for permanent residency, and launching a government talent-scouting arm.

When it comes to global talent, primary US competitors around the world from Canada to nations of Europe and east Asia are not standing still. However one feels about the flow of low-skilled and undocumented immigrants coming over the US border (I’m not a fan), attracting high-skilled immigrants who have a good chance to starting and running the companies of the future is a wise investment.

To reverse Lee Kwan Yew’s comment, if China can draw on a population of 1.3 billion for future technology and innovation, and the US effectively limits its own talent search to its existing population of 340 million, the US would be surrendering one of its primary economic advantages.

More By This Author: