Immigration

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Information on the Immigration Act of 1990 and how it has affected scientific migration.

International Mobility of Scientists and Engineers to the US. Brain Drain or Brain Circulation?: NSF Issue Brief 98-316. "This Issue Brief highlights the role of U.S. universities in acquiring, supporting and retaining foreign S&E talent, and the proportion of foreign doctoral recipients who remain in the United States for postdoctoral study as well as long-term employment."
Increasing US graduate enrollment in the sciences: "Should colleges in the United States adopt policies to insure that more of their graduate students in the sciences are Americans?" A Chronicle of Higher Education colloquy on the issue. May 10, 1999.
Uncontrolled Experiment: by Scott Stossel, The New Republic, March 29, 1999. An interesting and balanced article about the rise in scientific immigration and its consequences.
Statistical Profiles of Foreign Doctoral Recipients in Science and Engineering: Plans to Stay in the United States: "The majority of foreign students who earned S&E doctorates from U.S. institutions during 1988-96 planned to locate in the United States, and almost 40 percent reported firm plans for further study or employment. Most of those with firm plans had offers of postdoctoral appointments."
H-1B visas going fast: This year's cap of 65,000 H-1B guest-worker visas is already close to being reached, as employers snap up the controversial visas. CNET News.com, January 2004.
NPR's Science Friday on the Effects of Espionage on Science: June 4, 1999. "The release of the Cox Report on espionage in America's nuclear laboratories is shaking up Washington, DC... but what effect is the spy case going to have on the scientific community? ... Some observers are concerned that the backlash will also affect other policy matters, such as immigration quotas for foreign scientists -- and that a 'witch-hunt atmosphere' in government labs may sour the scientific aspirations of many innocent scientists who have connections to foreign groups." (requires a RealAudio player)
How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers: by Eric Weinstein, Project on the Economics of Advanced Training, Harvard University / National Bureau for Economic Research. Working Draft.
Findings We Never Found: George J. Borjas and Richard B. Freeman, New York Times, December 10, 1997. "Last May, the National Academy of Sciences released a long-awaited report on the economic impact of immigration. As members of the panel that wrote the report, we have been distressed to hear public officials repeatedly misrepresent its findings as the immigration debate has evolved in the last seven months."
A Fresh Approach to Immigration: by Alan Fechter (CPST) and Michael Teitelbaum (Sloan Foundation). Excerpt: "In the late 1980s, NSF's prediction of massive, looming shortfalls of scientists and engineers in the 1990s was one factor motivating large increases in employment-based ceilings for skilled workers-from 54,000 to 140,000 per year-embodied in the Immigration Act of 1990. When the forecasts of shortfalls proved dramatically wrong and the job market for doctoral scientists and engineers began to turn sour, concern shifted from future shortfall to current glut. ... [Efforts] to moderate the large increases adopted in 1990 were blocked during the 104th Congress. ... This outcome reflects the built-in inertia of public policy as well as the political and financial superiority of those advocating no change, from organized ethnic and religious groups to organizations representing research universities and certain employers such as Microsoft and Intel."
Stay Rates of Foreign Doctorate Recipients from US Universities, 2001: "More than two-thirds (71 percent) of foreign citizens who received science/engineering doctorates from U.S. universities in 1999 were in the United States in 2001."
If We Need Immigrant PhDs, Why Are American PhDs Poor And Unemployed?: "There they go again. Another report on the (allegedly) vital role of immigrants in the U.S. science and engineering workforce—implicitly bemoaning the competence of native-born Americans."
Senate weighs H-1B visa changes: September 27, 2004. "There's a push in Congress to change guest visa programs, including a proposal to create a new exemption to the annual cap of 65,000 new H-1B visas."
High Tech Migrant Labor: by Alexander Nguyen, The American Prospect, 12/20/99 "Guest workers: They're not just picking vegetables anymore. A new class of 'migrant workers' is taking shape in America's Silicon Valley and other technology centers. These immigrants are not sneaking over U.S. bordersthey arrive by jet from India, the Philippines, China, and Taiwan to take jobs in computer programming, software design, and information services."
Why Americans Don't Study Science: It Doesn't Pay: "There they go again. Claiming they can’t find enough skilled Americans, the high-tech industry has browbeaten Congress into allowing them to bring in another 20,000 foreign workers. The little-noticed legislation, inserted into an appropriations bill required for the government to continue normal operations, expands the number of foreign workers eligible for H-1b visas from 65,000 to 85,000 in 2005."
US Visa restrictions - Nature Web Focus (free access): Immigration controls introduced under the 'war on terror' are restricting the flow of foreign researchers into the United States. With other countries moving in on this pool of talent, will the balance of scientific power shift?
Student of Concern: SF Weekly, May 18, 2005. Proposed Department of Commerce regulations would require that foreign students get export licenses to use dual-purpose technologies in their studies. "Inherent in the new rules is a discriminatory contradiction: Students from India, which has cordial relations with the U.S., will need licenses to study, but students from Saudi Arabia -- home country for most of the participants in the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, and much of the financing and ideology behind Islamist terrorism -- will not."
Outward bound: Do developing countries gain or lose when their brightest talents go abroad?: The Economist, September 26, 2002.
Drop in foreign grad students raises alarm: CNN, November 5, 2004. "A new survey indicates the number of foreign graduate students enrolling for the first time at American universities is down 6 percent this year -- the third straight decline after a decade of growth. Educators worry the trend is eroding America's position as the world's leader in higher education."
How Much Does the U.S. Rely on Immigrant Engineers?: NSF Issue Brief 99-327. "This issue brief analyzes data on country-of-birth of U.S. engineers to explore differences and similarities between immigrant and U.S.-born engineers. Sectoral differences in employment, educational level, and socio-economic background are topics examined in the Brief."
foreignborn.com: "Our website includes a variety of useful information, from tax issues and medical briefings to overviews of banking and credit in the U.S. We have a popular guide that helps students who desire to 'Study in the U.S.', and we have extensive U.S. visa information that was developed with the assistance of a former official from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service."
Huddled Masses Yearning to Write Java: By Karl Schoenberger, The Industry Standard, May 1, 2000. "With unusual bipartisan consensus, Congress and Clinton are expected this month to approve a bill that would ease limits on the immigration of high-tech workers. But many charge that the U.S. labor shortage is a fiction exploited by business to the detriment of American programmers."
An Evaluation of the Foreign Student Program: by George J. Borjas. Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder, June, 2002. "The following evaluation of the foreign student program concludes that: * The INS has little control over the number and type of students being admitted; * The program is littered with corruption and fraud; * American taxpayers subsidize a sizable part of the tuition of foreign students; * The benefits from the program are greatly exaggerated, and the program may well generate a net economic loss for the country; * The program is best viewed as yet another redistribution program, shifting wealth away from native workers and taxpayers and redistributing it to universities and foreigners." (Requires Adobe Acrobat)
The New Face of the Silicon Age: How India became the capital of the computing revolution. By Daniel H. Pink, Wired, February 2004.
Are Graduate Admissions Fair?: An analysis of admissions and GRE scores suggesting that universities are running an affirmative action program for US citizens with preferences for citizenship that are an order of magnitude larger than those for gender or ethnicity.
Bush immigration plan could affect techies: "Details of President Bush's plan to tackle illegal immigration remain fuzzy, but the program could create a new way for technology employers to bring in foreign workers." CNET News.com, Jan 20, 2004.
Compete America - The Alliance for a Competitive Workforce: A lobbying group that seeks to ease restrictions on H1-B visas for foreign nationals with a Masters or PhD. "In a number of key technical fields, the total number of graduates with advanced degrees has not kept pace with demand. In addition, a rising percentage of the advanced degrees awarded by U.S. universities in areas of study like engineering, mathematics and computer sciences are to foreign nationals. Under current immigration law, however, many of these graduates are not available for hire by U.S. firms without H-1B visas. They are, however, available to overseas competitors."
Does Globalization of the Scientific/Engineering Workforce Threaten U.S. Economic Leadership? by Richard Freeman: Richard Freeman, NBER Working Paper, 2005. "This paper develops four propositions that show that changes in the global job market for science and engineering (S&E) workers are eroding US dominance in S&E, which diminishes comparative advantage in high tech production and creates problems for American industry and workers"
U.S. to sharply cut number of H-1B visas: September 22, 2003. "The United States is about to cut the number of employment visas it offers to highly qualified foreign workers from 195,000 to 65,000, immigration experts said Monday."
American Engineering Association: Link includes information on immigration, trade and a few other items with several related links listed.
More H1-B visas on the way?: CNET News.com, November 3, 2005. "A provision in a budget measure approved by a late 52 to 47 vote in the U.S. Senate on Thursday would bump up the number of guest-worker visas, known as H-1Bs, from 65,000 to 95,000 for next year."
INS Sees Big Drop in High-Tech Visas: Washington Post, August 16, 2002. "The fallout from a slowing economy and the technology bust has shown up in yet another place: the decreasing number of so-called high-tech visas awarded to foreign workers."
AFL-CIO, CWA propose H-1B reforms: A set of reforms to the H1-B program proposed by the AFL-CIO.
US biotechs and foreign nationals: the changing dynamics...: ...of access to H-1B visas - Nature Biotechnology. Recent changes in the H-1B visa program have left biotech employers shorthanded and confused.
Rethinking Foreign Students: A question of the national interest.: George Borjas, National Review, June 17, 2002. "In 1971, the State Department issued only 65,000 student visas. By 2000, it was issuing 315,000 such visas, and there may now be as many as 1 million foreign students in the U.S.... The program is now so large, so riddled with corruption, and so ineptly run that the INS simply does not know how many foreign students are in the country or where they are enrolled. It has grown explosively without anyone asking the most basic questions: Is such a large-scale foreign-student program in our interests? What does it cost us? And what does it buy us?"

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Immigration