High-Skilled Immigration Makes America Great

President Donald Trump decreased the number of high-skilled migration visas during his first term, but then spoke favorably about such migration before he started his second term. Unfortunately, he has flip-flopped back by imposing a massive new fee for those visas, which will drastically reduce high-skilled migration.

New high-skilled H-1B visas will now cost $100,000. They are currently under a severe annual quota of approximately 85,000, and fees before the change ranged from $2,000 to $5,000. The higher fee, then, will likely result in far fewer visas than allowed even by the quota, which typically attracted four to five times as many applicants as there were visas.

The existing cap was already too restrictive in relation to America’s needs, and the new fee will only exacerbate the issue. The native-born working-age population is shrinking and is projected to continue shrinking as baby boomers retire and birth rates remain low. Workforce growth, which is necessary to support the aging population, will depend largely on increased migration.  

Cutting back high-skilled migration is particularly unwise because these workers tend to fill niches that native-born people undersupply. More than two-thirds of H-1B visas go to people in STEM-related jobs (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), which companies often can’t fill with native-born Americans.

Those immigrants augment the productivity of Americans because immigrants’ skills are different. Rather than taking Americans’ jobs, high-skilled immigrants create a demand for complementary nontechnical jobs performed by the native-born. If high-skilled immigrants don’t come to the United States, some of the jobs they would have performed will move overseas, eliminating the complementary jobs.

High-skilled immigrants also go on to found and run major companies. Elon Musk (Tesla), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), and Sundar Pichai (Google) all originally entered the U.S. workforce with H-1B visas. Overall, 45 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. 

Conservatives’ other usual concerns about immigrants do not apply either. Highly educated immigrants rarely commit crimes, and according to the National Academy of Sciences, immigrants with graduate degrees generate approximately $1 million more in tax revenue over their lifetimes than they consume in government services. 

Meanwhile, China has introduced a new “K visa” to attract STEM workers; it will take effect on October 1. With more flexible employment rules than previous visas, the K visa will compete with the U.S. H-1B visas. President Trump’s new fee will likely encourage many talented South Asian tech workers to migrate to China rather than the United States. 

President Trump frequently says the United States competes technologically with China. About semiconductor technology, Trump’s AI advisor, David Sacks, states, “We have to remain paranoid about China … because they are doing everything they can to catch up…. [W]e don’t want China to catch up.”

America’s large, prosperous economy and long history as a nation of immigrants make it the number-one choice for most would-be immigrants. The United States could easily outcompete China by attracting the world’s best and brightest workers. We should allow them in.

President Trump once said, “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.” If he wants to strengthen the American economy, provide it with workers that enable it to grow, and outcompete China in technology, he’d be wise to eliminate the new H-1B visa fee and instead dramatically raise the cap to allow more high-skilled workers to immigrate. That would make America (immi)great!