Immigrant America: A redundancy

Even as its secondary schools lag, the United States remains a global paragon in higher education. The world’s brightest still flock to America’s colleges. Upon graduation, however, the law all but forces out too many innovative young workers. International students may apply for H-1B visas to work for three years, so long as the visa-holder’s company will sponsor the worker’s stay. H-1Bs are extendable for up to six years, after which point foreign nationals may apply for permanent residence. But such visas are capped annually at 65,000, which has left Silicon Valley clamoring for more.

To meet industry demand, Republican Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) has introduced Startup Act 3.0, a bipartisan bill that would create 75,000 additional visas for entrepreneurs. Applicants must raise $100,000 to fund their companies, as well as hire several new employees over a five-year span. The law promises to create between 500,000 and 1.6 million new jobs in 10 years, according to a study conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau Business Dynamics Statistics. This expansion in employment would boost GDP between 0.5 and 1 percent, BDS also calculated. American laws must reflect the modern global landscape, a smaller world in which the economic drivers — talented, young entrepreneurs — are increasingly lucrative and transportable across borders.

Accommodating immigrant entrepreneurs would help jump-start the flagging economy. Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney of the Hamilton Project, a subsidiary of the Brookings Institute, calculate that immigrants are significantly more likely to create companies and earn patents. The Partnership for a New American Economy estimates that the foreign-born or their children started about 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies. A century ago, swelling numbers of immigrants poured into factories and built the country’s manufacturing base. The American economy no longer relies on the production of tangible products, but rather on the unleashing of immaterial innovations.

An unscientific yet telling litmus test for high-tech visa reform is to measure the competition’s reactions to the proposals. India’s finance minister recently cautioned Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew “that temporary relocation of knowledge workers should not be confused with immigration.” Our global counterparts are right to worry about the expansion of the American promise. For decades, nations like India exported their talent to the United States for education, then gladly welcomed their newly educated citizens home to reap the economic rewards. America can no longer afford to be closed for business.

I can hear the shrill nativist calls now — cries of foreigners stealing jobs. Of course, there are reasonable limits: Someone who majors in English with a certificate in gender studies should be treated differently than an engineer in the eyes of the law. There are merits to a liberal arts education, to be sure. But the state’s interest only extends in this context to encouraging professional and advanced degrees. And any sovereign nation reserves the right to restrict its borders. There is a middle ground in which the United States competes aggressively to recruit the foreign-born to innovate on its shores. According to The Economist, the United States welcomes only 225,000 specially-skilled immigrants per year, which only counts for 0.1 percent of the workforce. It’s time to smash the funnel and unleash dynamism to reinvigorate the U.S. economy.

This is only a small part of the broader immigration struggle facing the United States. With 11 million people living in the shadows without access to basic vital resources, America is in danger of cementing a subclass. A guest worker program and a pathway to citizenship that is tied to border security are two additional measures critical to recognizing those who are American in all but title. Though these two proposals are fraught with controversy, easing the process of naturalization for high-skilled workers is an issue on which even the most polarized Congress in recent memory can agree.

David Will is a religion major from Chevy Chase, Md. He can be reached at dwill@princeton.edu.