High-skilled Immigrants Research Articles

Introduction: US High-Skilled Immigration in the Global Economy

Immigrants account for approximately a quarter of US science and engineering ðS&EÞworkers with bachelor’s educations, and yet there have been at most a few dozen detailed academic studies that examine the link of immigration and innovation in the United States. High-skilled immigrants represent an increasing share of the US workforce, particularly in science and engineering S&E fields. Foreign-born individuals account for nearly 28% of doctorate-level workers in the United States and more than 45% of those with PhDs employed in S&E fields. The potential impact of high-skilled immigration on the US economy extends well beyond traditional questions of the impact on wages and employment for the immigrants and natives. The expansion of the pool of high-skilled workers is often accompanied by innovations as measured by patents and other forms of scientific output, which suggests the potential for high-skilled immigration to contribute to net human capital externalities. Indeed, foreign-born scientists account for a disproportionate number of major scientific contributions ðStephan and Levin 2001Þ and about a quarter of US innovative outputs ðKerr 2013Þ. Still, the limited evidence regarding the economic and distributional consequences of highskilled immigration has become all the more apparent and worrisome given the policy focus on the issue. While the study of immigration and immigration policy has a long history, a disproportionate share of the research has focused on lower-skilled groups. There is also an established line of economics research on high-skilled labor markets motivated by the importance of scientific innovation for

Immigration and Ideas: What Did Russian Scientists “Bring” to the United States?

This paper examines how high-skilled immigrants contribute to knowledge diffusion using a rich data set of Russian scientists and US citations to Soviet-era publications. Analysis of a panel of US cities and scientific fields shows that citations to Soviet-era work increased significantly with the arrival of immigrants. A difference-in-differences analysis with matched paper pairs also shows that after Russian scientists moved to the United States, citations to their Soviet-era papers increased relative to control papers. Both strategies reveal scientific field–specific effects. Ideas in high-impact papers and papers previously accessible to US scientists were the most likely to “spill over” to natives.

How High-Skill Immigration Affects Science: Evidence from the Collapse of the USSR

Executive SummaryA commonly cited reason for increasing high-skill immigration to the United States is the perceived positive impact that such immigrants would have on the course of US science. While it is true that scientific research is particularly important for long-term economic well-being, and while it is also true that immigrants have historically accounted for a disproportionate share of US scientific output, the causal impact of an increase in the number of high-skill immigrants on US science is not obvious. An influx of new knowledge and knowledge-generating workers may generate knowledge spillovers: the productivity-enhancing peer effects that must be present if high-skill immigration is to have beneficial long-run effects. However, scientists must also compete for scarce resources such as jobs, journal space, and attention in order for their research to be produced, disseminated, and used. This paper reviews the evidence we report in recent work (Borjas and Doran 2012, 2014) that simultaneousl...

On the Economic Geography of International Migration

We exploit the bilateral and skill dimensions from recent data sets of international migration to test for the existence of Zipf's and Gibrat's Laws in the context of aggregate and high-skilled international immigration and emigration using graphical, parametric and non-parametric analysis. The top tails of the distributions of aggregate and high-skilled immigrants and emigrants adhere to a Pareto distribution with an exponent of unity i.e. Zipf's Law holds. We find some evidence in favour of Gibrat's Law holding for immigration stocks, i.e. that the growth in stocks is independent of their initial values and stronger evidence that immigration densities are diverging over time. Conversely, emigrant stocks are converging in the sense that countries with smaller emigrant stocks are growing faster than their larger sovereign counterparts. Lastly, high skilled immigration and emigration stocks expressed in levels or as densities all exhibit signs of convergence. We conclude by discussing some competing mechanisms that could be driving the observed patterns including: differing fertility rates, reductions in emigration restrictions, migrant sorting and selective immigration policies, immigrant networks and persisting wage differentials.

Does High Inequality Attract High Skilled Immigrants?

This study examines how the sources and levels of income inequality affect how a country attracts and retains high skilled workers. With parameter values that yield realistic levels of emigration, our model shows that emigration rates increase with education when the returns to education are higher abroad. However, the relationship between unobservable skills (‘residual wages’) and emigration can display an inverse U-shaped pattern, if unobservable skills are composed of both ‘general’ and ‘country-specific’ skills. Using data on Israeli emigrants before they decide to emigrate, we find strong empirical evidence in support of the model's predictions.

The Effect of High-Skilled Immigration on Patenting and Employment: Evidence from H-1B Visa Lotteries

We study the effect of a firm winning an additional H-1B visa on the firm’s outcomes, by comparing winning and losing firms in the Fiscal Year 2006 and 2007 H-1B visa lotteries. We match administrative data on the participants in these lotteries to the universe of approved U.S. patents, and to IRS data on the universe of U.S. firms. Winning additional H-1B visas has insignificant effects on firms’ patenting and use of the research and experimentation tax credit, with confidence intervals that generally rule out more than modest effects. Additional H-1Bs cause at most a moderate increase in firms’ overall employment, and these H-1Bs substantially crowd out firms’ employment of other workers. There is some evidence that additional H-1Bs lead to lower average employee earnings and higher firm profits.

Developing a Conceptual Framework of Skills Immigration in South Africa

South Africa is in the throes of a skills crisis. This situation is seriously hampering the country’s economic progress and global participation. This study focuses on the analysis of skills migration in South Africa, and specifically aims to provide a conceptual framework for better cognition of the skills situation in South Africa. This crisis is largely due to the failure of the national education and training system to supply the economy with much needed skills required to support economic growth and job creation. The findings of this study indicated that there are various factors that are contributing to the skills shortages in the country. Some of the factors include: poor education standards, emigration, crime and HIV. It must be noted that these factors cannot be addressed overnight. Hence, this paper emphasised the role that skilled foreign workers can play in alleviating the skills shortages in the country. The contribution of foreign workers could be viewed as a short to medium solution to the skills crisis. Finally, this study has confirmed the findings of similar studies undertaken by the Centre for Development and Enterprise that opening the doors to high-skilled immigration can only serve as a means of supplementing the skills pool and hence contributing to the economic growth of the country. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p62

U.S. Immigration Policy at a Crossroads: Should the U.S. Continue Its Family-Friendly Policy?

An ongoing debate is whether the U.S. should continue its family-based admission system, which favors visas for family members of U.S. citizens and residents, or adopt a more skills-based system, replacing family visas with employment-based visas. In many ways, this is a false dichotomy: family-friendly policies attract highly-skilled immigrants regardless of their own visa path, and there are not strong reasons why a loosening of restrictions on employment migrants need be accompanied by new restrictions on family-based immigration. Moreover, it is misleading to think that only employment-based immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy. Recent immigrants, who have mostly entered via kinship ties, are economically productive, a fact hidden by a flawed methodology that underlies most economic analyses of immigrant economic assimilation.

High-skilled immigrants in times of crisis. A cross-European analysis

In times of economic turmoil, do high-skilled immigrants (HSIMs) tremble, or are they better suited than non-immigrants or low-skill immigrants to cope with such instability? This paper sheds some light on HSIMs’ social integration during crisis by considering their life satisfaction, ability to get paid work, and civic participation. European Social Survey (ESS) data are used in multilevel models aiming to disentangle the effect of recession in the host economy from that of living through times of crisis. The existing literature does not point in a clear direction, but the use of acculturation perspective, along with the self-selection hypothesis, help to derive clearer expectations. Diverse pathways are revealed. In troubled economies, HSIMs succeed in increasing their access to paid work and involvement in organizations, but their life satisfaction decreases. In functional economies, the situation is reversed: Life satisfaction seems to have a protective role in relation to the slightly higher difficulties in the labor market and lesser civic participation.

House and Senate Legislation on High Skill Immigration: NFAP Policy Brief

If Congress takes up immigration reform legislation later this year, employers and the U.S. economy will benefit from several provisions on high skilled immigration. Key parts of the bills would open the door to more highly skilled individuals. However, other aspects of the legislation will, at minimum, complicate the hiring and recruitment process. The best approach for growth, innovation and the U.S. economy would combine the best features of the House and Senate bills. That would mean 1) selecting the less-restrictive House approach to H-1B visas, after changing the requirement that foreign nationals should be paid more than their U.S. counterparts, 2) adopting the Senate approach to employment-based green cards, since that provides more green cards and will eliminate the current backlog, and 3) taking the best elements of the House and Senate measures on immigrant entrepreneur visas, particularly the provision in S. 744 to permit a renewable temporary status for a foreign-born entrepreneur. S. 744 passed the U.S. Senate in June 2013, at nearly the same time the House Judiciary Committee passed H.R. 2131, the SKILLS Visa Act. Neither H.R. 2131 nor other House immigration bills have moved to the House floor. A grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation funded the research for this NFAP paper. The contents of this publication are solely the responsibility of the National Foundation for American Policy.

Immigration and Economic Growth in Metropolitan Areas

This research answers the question whether immigration contributes to metropolitan areas’ productivity and economic growth, and it also quantifies the impacts of immigration on productivity and economic growth. It examines the relationships between metropolitan Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the measures of immigration in the United States from 2000-2010 and attempts to find evidence in three mechanisms through which immigration can contribute to the economic growth: the overall effects, the skill effects and the complementarity effects. In each effect’ analysis, this research uses reduced- and structural-form equations and uses fixed-effects and first-difference models. First, reduced-form analysis with the specification of GDP per worker as the dependent variable and share of immigrant workers in total workforce as the independent variable revealed that the overall immigration has a small negative impact on metropolitan productivity growth, and this potential negative impact increases with metropolitan population size. Structural-form analysis with the specification of GDP level as the dependent variable and numbers of immigrant worker as the independent variable found that immigration has a significant positive impact on economic growth. However, using instrumental variables cannot enhance this finding with reduced endogeneity. Second, neither reduced- or structural- form analysis found that high-skilled immigrants contribute to the productivity and economic growth. Interestingly, fixed-effects panel regression results pointed out that low-skilled immigrants make a substantial contribution to the productivity and economic growth. Third, this research revealed evidence that immigration contributes to the economic growth through complementing native workers and the complementarity comes from both the immigrant and native workers with the same and with different levels of education. Immigration’s impact on labor market outcomes has been extensively studied. However, previous literature seldom focuses on immigration’s effect on the aggregate economic measurement such as GDP. By providing an in-depth analysis of immigrants’ impact on metropolitan GDP, this research seeks to fill the gap in the immigration economic impact and regional economic growth literature. This research’s findings provide direct guidance in making and implementing metropolitan-specific immigration policy.

Tendencies of High-Skilled Migration coming from Romania. Favourable Legislation and Social Policies

The external migration of a significant part of Romania's high-skilled population is a social phenomenon which became increasingly frequent starting from the 1990s, right after the fall of the communist regime. The basis for this phenomenon consists of several causes: globalization, the strengthening of international economic relations, and later on, Romania's adhesion to the European Union. Research has shown that of all high-skilled population, the professionals who emigrate more frequently consist of engineers, teachers, medical staff, scientific researchers, economists and architects. Besides, the chosen destinations have been variable throughout time. The first phase in time took place in the 1990s, when a large part of the high-skilled population chose to emigrate for professional purposes in countries such as The United States of America, Canada, Germany or Israel. The second important phase occurred after year 2000, when the focus was placed on EU countries, especially after Romania's integration. Apart from temporary unqualified migration, the number of high-skilled migrants and those who leave the country to continue their studies also soared. The chosen countries generally include Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, France and Austria. Given these differences in the tendencies of high-skilled migration, this paper will offer an insight on how the phenomenon evolved, and the factors that caused these variations in space and time. Most likely, some of the countries that were preferred have been facilitating the integration of high-skilled immigrants in society, as opposed to unqualified ones, through a selective set of laws and social policies which are meant to favour this social category. Therefore, we will discover and analyze various examples and benefits of legislation and social policies which offered social protection to high-skilledimmigrants in various countries. This paper is made and published under the aegis of the Research Institute for Quality of Life, Romanian Academy, as part of the programme co-funded by the European Union within the Operational Sectorial Programme for Human Resources Development, through the Project for Pluri and Interdisciplinarity in doctoral and post-doctoral programmes. Project code: POSDRU/159/1.5/S/141086

Is the Minimum Wage a Pull Factor for Immigrants?

In this article, the author studies the effects of the minimum wage on immigration. He develops an analytical framework in which immigration is a function of the expected wage in the region of destination. In the analysis, the author exploits the state variation in expected wages stemming from the changes in the U.S. federal minimum wage during 1996–1997 and 2007–2009. The author addresses endogeneity between immigration and the expected wage using an instrumental variable approach. His results provide consistent evidence that the policy induced a sizeable flow of low-skilled immigrants to the United States in both periods. This pull is attributable to the minimum wage increasing immigrants' wages without harming their potential employment outcomes. The author corroborates these findings by showing that the policy did not have any impact on the flow of high-skilled immigrants. The effect on low-skilled immigration is also found when the interstate mobility of immigrants is considered. Finally, changes in the minimum wage only attracted legal immigrants, while undocumented immigrants were not affected.

Firms and the Economics of Skilled Immigration

Firms play a central role in the selection, sponsorship, and employment of skilled immigrants entering the United States for work through programs like the H-1B visa. This role has not been widely recognized in the literature, and the data to better understand it have only recently become available. This chapter discusses the evidence that has been assembled to date in understanding the impact of high skilled immigration from the perspective of the firm and the open areas that call for more research. Since much of the U.S. immigration process for skilled workers rests in the hands of employer firms, a stronger understanding of these implications is essential for future policy analysis, particularly for issues relating to fostering innovation.

Firms and the Economics of Skilled Immigration

Executive SummaryFirms play a central role in the selection, sponsorship, and employment of skilled immigrants entering the United States for work through programs like the H-1B visa. This role has not been widely recognized in the literature, and the data to better understand it have only recently become available. This chapter discusses the evidence that has been assembled to date in understanding the impact of high-skilled immigration from the perspective of the firm and the open areas that call for more research. Since much of the US immigration process for skilled workers rests in the hands of employer firms, a stronger understanding of these implications is essential for future policy analysis, particularly for issues relating to fostering innovation.

Lessons for U.S. Metro Areas: Characteristics and Clustering of High-Tech Immigrant Entrepreneurs

A comprehensive white paper version of this paper is available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2416518Immigrant-owned enterprises are an increasingly important part of the U.S. economy. According to the 2007-2011 American Community Survey (ACS), immigrants now comprise 20 percent of the high-tech work force and 17.3 percent of high-tech entrepreneurs. This is an increase from 13.7 percent and 13.5 percent, respectively, in 2000. Between 2000 and 2011 (the ACS five-year data), the immigrant labor force in high-tech industries grew much faster than the U.S.-born labor force did — 37.2 percent versus 10.7 percent. The self-employed in high-tech industries for the foreign-born grew even faster, with a rate of 64 percent, compared to 22.6 percent for the U.S.-born. For both time periods, half of the self-employed immigrants in high-tech industries are incorporated, a higher rate than for the native-born labor force.Past empirical studies have demonstrated the importance of high-skill immigrants in high-tech sectors, entrepreneurship, and job creation (Saxenian, 1999, 2006; Wadhwa et al., 2007, 2012). However, we have little understanding about their presence outside of Silicon Valley, especially geographically and by sector. This paper further addresses geographic factors that correlate with the concentration of high-skill immigrant entrepreneurs across metropolitan areas, providing policy implications for local and state strategies to promote an immigrant-friendly environment.Key findings include:• Among the top ten countries from which immigrants in high-tech industries have arrived to the United States, there is a significant variation in rate of self-employment and its growth over time. In period 2007–2011, the national rate of self-employment in high-tech industries is 6.2 percent. The rate is around 2 percent to 3 percent for immigrants from Vietnam, Mexico, and Philippines, and 9 percent to10 percent for immigrants from England, Iran, and Canada.• Since the beginning of the new century, the total number of the self-employed labor force in high-tech industries experienced significant growth in immigrants from Columbia, China, India, Korea, and Vietnam, but stagnant growth for countries like Iran, England, Mexico, Germany, and Cuba.• Compared to their U.S.-born counterparts, who are more evenly distributed across all the high-tech sectors, immigrant owned high-tech businesses are more concentrated in a limited number of industries, such as semiconductor, other electronic component, magnetic, and optical media, communications, audio/video equipment, and computer science-related sectors.• Spatially, immigrant high-tech entrepreneurs are concentrated in a smaller number of metropolitan areas, with 80 percent of them concentrated in the largest twenty-five metropolitan areas, in contrast to 57 percent of their U.S.-born counterparts.• Across different groups, immigrant high-tech entrepreneurs demonstrate the highest concentration, surpassing all high-tech workers and all workers. At the same time, the evidence suggests that concentration fell from 2000–2011, which is consistent with growing literature that documents immigrants’ dispersing settlement patterns.• Both immigrant and U.S.-born high-tech businesses are more likely to locate within regional labor markets that have an overall higher percentage of high-tech industries and higher innovation capacity. At the same time, metropolitan areas with higher percentages of construction and social services tend to have a higher number of native-born-owned businesses in high-tech industries.• Unlike the U.S.-born, however, higher ethnic diversity and a larger share of the foreign-born population are crucial factors in attracting or fostering immigrant high-tech entrepreneurship on the metropolitan level.These results imply that an open and culturally diverse environment is positively associated with creative and innovative activities for both immigrants and the U.S.-born.

Lessons for U.S. Metro Areas: Characteristics and Clustering of High-Tech Immigrant Entrepreneurs (comprehensive white paper version)

Another version of this paper is available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2416903Immigrant-owned enterprises are an increasingly important part of the U.S. economy. According to the 2007–2011 American Community Survey (ACS), immigrants now comprise 20 percent of the high-tech work force and 17.3 percent of high-tech entrepreneurs. This is an increase from 13.7 percent and 13.5 percent, respectively, in 2000. Between 2000 and 2011 (the ACS five-year data), the immigrant labor force in high-tech industries grew much faster than the U.S.-born labor force did—37.2 percent versus 10.7 percent. The self-employed in high-tech industries for the foreign-born grew even faster, with a rate of 64 percent, compared to 22.6 percent for the U.S.-born. For both time periods, half of the self-employed immigrants in high-tech industries are incorporated, a higher rate than for the native-born labor force. Past empirical studies have demonstrated the importance of high-skill immigrants in high-tech sectors, entrepreneurship, and job creation (Saxenian, 1999, 2006; Wadhwa et al., 2007, 2012). However, we have little understanding about their presence outside of Silicon Valley, especially geographically and by sector. This paper further addresses geographic factors that correlate with the concentration of high-skill immigrant entrepreneurs across metropolitan areas, providing policy implications for local and state strategies to promote an immigrant-friendly environment. Key findings include: • Among the top ten countries from which immigrants in high-tech industries have arrived to the United States, there is a significant variation in rate of self-employment and its growth over time. In period 2007–2011, the national rate of self-employment in high-tech industries is 6.2 percent. The rate is around 2 percent to 3 percent for immigrants from Vietnam, Mexico, and Philippines, and 9 percent to10 percent for immigrants from England, Iran, and Canada. • Since the beginning of the new century, the total number of the self-employed labor force in high-tech industries experienced significant growth in immigrants from Columbia, China, India, Korea, and Vietnam, but stagnant growth for countries like Iran, England, Mexico, Germany, and Cuba. • Compared to their U.S.-born counterparts, who are more evenly distributed across all the high-tech sectors, immigrant owned high-tech businesses are more concentrated in a limited number of industries, such as semiconductor, other electronic component, magnetic, and optical media, communications, audio/video equipment, and computer science-related sectors. • Spatially, immigrant high-tech entrepreneurs are concentrated in a smaller number of metropolitan areas, with 80 percent of them concentrated in the largest twenty-five metropolitan areas, in contrast to 57 percent of their U.S.-born counterparts. • Across different groups, immigrant high-tech entrepreneurs demonstrate the highest concentration, surpassing all high-tech workers and all workers. At the same time, the evidence suggests that concentration fell from 2000–2011, which is consistent with growing literature that documents immigrants’ dispersing settlement patterns. • Both immigrant and U.S.-born high-tech businesses are more likely to locate within regional labor markets that have an overall higher percentage of high-tech industries and higher innovation capacity. At the same time, metropolitan areas with higher percentages of construction and social services tend to have a higher number of native-born-owned businesses in high-tech industries. • Unlike the U.S.-born, however, higher ethnic diversity and a larger share of the foreign-born population are crucial factors in attracting or fostering immigrant high-tech entrepreneurship on the metropolitan level. These results imply that an open and culturally diverse environment is positively associated with creative and innovative activities for both immigrants and the U.S.-born.

Immigrants and entrepreneurship

Immigrants are widely perceived to be highly entrepreneurial, contributing to economic growth and innovation, and self-employment is often viewed as a means of enhancing labor market integration and success among immigrants. Accordingly, many countries have established special visas and entry requirements to attract immigrant entrepreneurs. Research supports some of these stances, but expectations may be too high. There is no strong evidence that self-employment is an effective tool of upward economic mobility among low-skilled immigrants. More broadly prioritizing high-skilled immigrants may prove to be more successful than focusing on entrepreneurship.

Skill-based immigration, economic integration, and economic performance

Studies for major immigrant-receiving countries provide evidence on the comparative economic performance of immigrant classes (skill-, kinship-, and humanitarian-based). Developed countries are increasingly competing for high-skilled immigrants, who perform better in the labor market. However, there are serious challenges to their economic integration, which highlights a need for complementary immigration and integration policies.

The Effect of (Mostly Unskilled) Immigration on the Innovation of Italian Regions

We use small Italian regions (i.e. provinces) to investigate the causal effect of foreign immigration on innovation during 2003-2008. Using instrumental variables estimation (based on immigrants' enclaves), we find that the overall stock of immigrants did not have any effect on innovation. However, decomposing the overall effect into the contributions of low- and high-skilled migrants shows that an increase of 1 percentage point in the share of low-skilled migrants on the population reduces patent applications by about 0.2%. By contrast, the impact of high-skilled immigrants on innovation is positive, in line with the previous literature, but cannot be precisely estimated.