{"id":8727,"date":"2022-08-28T21:25:03","date_gmt":"2022-08-28T21:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8727"},"modified":"2022-08-28T21:25:03","modified_gmt":"2022-08-28T21:25:03","slug":"america-has-an-innovation-problem-the-h-1b-visa-backlog-is-making-it-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8727","title":{"rendered":"America has an innovation problem. The H-1B visa backlog is making it worse."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Since the early 20th century, the US has been a world leader<\/a> in innovation and technical progress. In recent decades, however, some experts have worried that the country\u2019s performance on these<\/a>fronts<\/a> has been slowing<\/a>, even stalling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many possible explanations for this phenomenon, but one has seemed especially salient in recent years: an immigration system that discourages, and often turns away, the most highly skilled and talented foreign workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historically, immigrants have played a vital role in American innovation. As Jeremy Neufeld<\/a>, an immigration policy fellow with the Institute for Progress, a new innovation-focused think tank, remarked to me, \u201cIt\u2019s always been the case that immigrants have been a secret ingredient in US dynamism.\u201d Robert Krol<\/a>, a professor of economics with California State University Northridge, describes it this way: \u201cThe bottom line is that when you look at the impact of immigrants \u2014 whether you think about starting businesses or innovating patents \u2014 they have a large, significant impact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multiple<\/a> analyses<\/a> of historical immigration patterns show that more migrants to a region correlates with a higher rate of innovation and related economic growth. By contrast, when immigration is more restricted,<\/a> companies \u2014 especially tech companies<\/a> and those that conduct innovative R&D work<\/a> \u2014 are less successful<\/a>, and growth in jobs and wages<\/a> slows. Studies have also shown that immigrants tend to be entrepreneurial<\/a>: Based on survey data between 2008 and 2012<\/a>, 25 percent of companies across the US were founded by first-generation immigrants. Other<\/a> research<\/a> shows that immigrants are more likely than native-born US citizens to register patents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Neufeld points out<\/a>, the Covid-19 pandemic might have gone much worse if immigration had always been as restrictive as it is now. A number of co-founders and critical researchers with Moderna are immigrants, as is Katalin Karik\u00f3<\/a>, a pioneer<\/a> of mRNA research<\/a> \u2014 who, if she had tried to immigrate after the 1990 H-1B reforms to the skilled guest worker program, might not have been able to come to the US at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those H-1B guest visas are at the center of the issue today, someexperts say. Designed in 1990<\/a> to bring in skilled professionals to meet labor market shortages, visas through the H-1B guest workers program are sponsored by employers, who submit petitions to bring in particular foreign professionals appropriately qualified for specific, highly skilled roles<\/a>. Guest workers generally need at least a bachelor\u2019s degree in a relevant field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), there are about 580,000 foreign workers<\/a> currently on H-1B visas, a small percentage of the US workforce and immigrant population. But they are disproportionately concentrated in STEM, particularly computer-related occupations, often in fields where cutting-edge technologies are being developed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the H-1B process is falling increasingly out of date and badly failing to serve its original purpose of turning on the talent tap for top innovative companies. Congress\u00a0sets an annual cap<\/a>\u00a0on how many H-1B visa holders can come in, and that cap is now far below what the labor market demands. The crush of applications once the window opens for a given year on March 1 is so intense that, in every year since 2014, USCIS has resorted to a lottery system instead of a first-come, first-serve process. That means that year in and year out, hundreds of thousands of high-skilled workers from abroad try to come to the US and ultimately fail, so that both the prospective employee and the company hoping to hire them end up losing out on their preferred option.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/23177446\/immigrants-tech-companies-united-states-innovation-h1b-visas-immigration<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Since the early 20th century, the US has been a world leader in innovation and technical progress. In recent decades, however, some experts have worried that the country\u2019s performance on these fronts has been slowing, even stalling.<\/p>\n

There are many possible explanations for this phenomenon, but one has seemed especially salient in recent years: an immigration system that discourages, and often turns away, the most highly skilled and talented foreign workers.<\/p>\n

Historically, immigrants have played a vital role in American innovation. As Jeremy Neufeld, an immigration policy fellow with the Institute for Progress, a new innovation-focused think tank, remarked to me, \u201cIt\u2019s always been the case that immigrants have been a secret ingredient in US dynamism.\u201d Robert Krol, a professor of economics with California State University Northridge, describes it this way: \u201cThe bottom line is that when you look at the impact of immigrants \u2014 whether you think about starting businesses or innovating patents \u2014 they have a large, significant impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multiple analyses of historical immigration patterns show that more migrants to a region correlates with a higher rate of innovation and related economic growth. By contrast, when immigration is more restricted, companies \u2014 especially tech companies and those that conduct innovative R&D work \u2014 are less successful, and growth in jobs and wages slows. Studies have also shown that immigrants tend to be entrepreneurial: Based on survey data between 2008 and 2012, 25 percent of companies across the US were founded by first-generation immigrants. Other research shows that immigrants are more likely than native-born US citizens to register patents.<\/p>\n

As Neufeld points out, the Covid-19 pandemic might have gone much worse if immigration had always been as restrictive as it is now. A number of co-founders and critical researchers with Moderna are immigrants, as is Katalin Karik\u00f3, a pioneer of mRNA research \u2014 who, if she had tried to immigrate after the 1990 H-1B reforms to the skilled guest worker program, might not have been able to come to the US at all.<\/p>\n

Those H-1B guest visas are at the center of the issue today, some experts say. Designed in 1990 to bring in skilled professionals to meet labor market shortages, visas through the H-1B guest workers program are sponsored by employers, who submit petitions to bring in particular foreign professionals appropriately qualified for specific, highly skilled roles. Guest workers generally need at least a bachelor\u2019s degree in a relevant field.<\/p>\n

According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), there are about 580,000 foreign workers currently on H-1B visas, a small percentage of the US workforce and immigrant population. But they are disproportionately concentrated in STEM, particularly computer-related occupations, often in fields where cutting-edge technologies are being developed.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the H-1B process is falling increasingly out of date and badly failing to serve its original purpose of turning on the talent tap for top innovative companies. Congress sets an annual cap on how many H-1B visa holders can come in, and that cap is now far below what the labor market demands. The crush of applications once the window opens for a given year on March 1 is so intense that, in every year since 2014, USCIS has resorted to a lottery system instead of a first-come, first-serve process. That means that year in and year out, hundreds of thousands of high-skilled workers from abroad try to come to the US and ultimately fail, so that both the prospective employee and the company hoping to hire them end up losing out on their preferred option.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1349,217,165,1509,493,25,411,1005,1179],"class_list":["post-8727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-economic-growth","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-h-1b","tag-immigrants","tag-immigration","tag-policy","tag-technology","tag-visas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8728,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8727\/revisions\/8728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}