2013 Hinckley Journal - Hinckley Institute of Politics - University of ...

The Hinckley Journal of Politics 2013
The data establishes that high-skilled immigrants possess more of every
type of post-college degree than natives. Likely due to their greater achievements,
the study continues to explain that compared to natives (0.9%),
double (2%) the amount of high-skilled immigrants have patented in the
last five years. Additionally, 14.4% of natives had published materials, but
17.6% of immigrants had. Moreover, 6.8% of high-skilled immigrants had
published more than six times compared to only 3.6% of natives. High-skilled
immigrants’ superior abilities to start new business (many of which become
extremely successful) create more jobs and their talented minds drive more
innovation in this country. Their disproportionately immense contributions
more than compensate for whatever jobs they may “steal.”
The Next Generation
Though the accomplishments of high-skilled immigrants are very impressive,
there is one group that can match them. The children of high-skilled
immigrants are predictably talented as well. A 2004 study by Stuart Anderson,
Executive Director for the NFAP, elected to focus on the contributions
of the children of immigrants. The investigation
discovered that 70% of winners of the 2004 Intel
Science Talent Search were either immigrants or
their children. Specifically, 18 participants had
parents who had entered on a visa compared to 16
who had native-born parents. Children of immigrants
dominated other events as well. Sixty-five
percent of the 2004 U.S. Math Olympiad’s top scorers
and 46% of the U.S. Physics Team were comprised of children who had
immigrant parents. Policies that make it more difficult for immigrants to
come will not only deprive this country of their talent but also of their
children’s. As Anderson (2004) puts it, “Their children are rising intellectual
superstars—and without them that nation’s technological and scientific
standing is at risk” (p. 15).
The Causes for an Inefficient System: Nativism
“Seventy percent of winners of the
2004 Intel Science Talent Search
were either immigrants or their
children.”
If all the evidence seems to clearly suggest that high-skilled immigrants
are vital assets to this country, what then is the cause for so many
negative policies One study identifies two main concerns that create antiimmigration
sentiments (Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2010). Published in the
American Political Science Review, a leading political science research journal,
the survey experiment examined the Labor Market Competition (LMC)
model and the Fiscal Burden (FB) model. The former predicts that natives
are most opposed to immigrants with similar skill levels because, as the
name implies, these will represent their biggest competition. The second
model predicts that rich natives will oppose low-skilled immigrants and
support high-skilled immigrants more than poor natives will. The reason
for this is that the rich natives are paying for the social services likely being
used by low-skilled immigrants. This should also cause rich natives to be
more opposed to low-skilled immigrants in states that offer more access to
social services. Consistent with the structure used in this paper, the study
attempts to examine attitudes toward low-skilled and high-skilled immigrants
separately (instead of looking at immigration as a whole). The first results
contradict the Labor Market Competition model. The researchers find that
both low-skilled and high-skilled natives strongly prefer high-skilled immigrants.
Additionally, support for immigrants of all skill levels increases with
the skills of the native. These findings imply that the Labor Market Competition
model does not really cause anti-immigrant sentiments. As for the
Fiscal Burden model, the study shows that rich and poor natives equally
favor high-skilled over low-skilled immigrants and that the rich are
surprisingly less opposed to low-skilled immigrants in states with more
welfare programs. The poor natives, however, are more opposed to lowskilled
immigrants in states with more fiscal exposure. In other words, the
data indicates that fiscal burden concerns are mainly relevant among poor
natives only. The combined results of the study reveal two important conclusions.
The first one is that in every situation all natives seemed to always
favor high-skilled immigrants. Once again, this begs the question as to why
such an unfair visa system exists for high-skilled immigrants. The second
conclusion offers a possible answer to this question. If two of the most
prominent attitude formation theories do not explain anti-immigrant
sentiments, and given that appreciation of immigrants seems to increase
with a native’s level of skill (education), negative attitudes appear to form
based on non-economic factors. Nativism, a nostalgic ideology that works
to secure its identity by treating difference as a threat, creates a lack of
tolerance that crosses into racism too often in the American immigration
debate.
Jason Riley (2008), author of Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders,
arrives at a similar conclusion. The author believes that eugenics, a science
that advocates improving the population through
selective breeding and is closely related to the ideology
of Social Darwinism, is one of the root causes
for anti-immigration sentiment in this country. The
belief that access should be restricted to individuals
of inferior quality is very problematic. Quality is a
subjective concept that cannot easily be assigned to
different races. However, if we assume for a moment
that the quality of individuals is based on their productive ability, then the
argument of eugenics could also be used against natives. The evidence
provided in this research demonstrates that immigrants (usually high-skilled)
can in fact be more productive than the native population (Anderson &
Platzer, 2006; NFAP, 2007; Anderson, 2004; Fairlie, 2008; Hunt, 2010).
Though nativism may partially explain why the visa system for highskilled
immigrants remains so inefficient, it mostly applies to attitudes
towards low-skilled and undocumented immigrants. Support for high-skilled
immigration reform is actually more widespread. However, change remains
elusive. Lawmakers are beginning to recognize the need for reform, but
cannot seem to agree on how to proceed (Selyukh, 2013). Opinions range
from those who believe Congress should focus on H-1Bs to those who wish
to begin with the green card situation (Martinez, 2013). Until all political
parties can come to a compromise, the nation will continue to lose exceptional
workers and delay its course to having a more productive workforce.
Conclusion: There Are Solutions
As serious as the situation may seem, better policies can be easily implemented
to quickly resolve many of the issues regarding high-skilled immigrants.
For example, a simple policy that eliminates the per country limits for
employment-based green cards would lower the waiting time for India (70
years) to about 10 years in the EB-3 category (Anderson, 2011). Solely
removing per country limits will not eliminate all the total backlogs that
exist for the different categories, but it would at least make it fairer for
countries with larger populations by creating a true first-come, first-serve
system. The ideal solution though, would be to eliminate the limits completely
or at least increase them. A policy that creates 50,000 exemptions from visas
for students with U.S. degrees in the fields of science, technology, engineering,
and mathematics (STEM) would eliminate the entire backlog of the
EB-2 category within three years and make the EB-3 category current within
10 years. Between fiscal years 1992 to 2006, about 500,000 available visas
were unused. Special legislation recaptured about 200,000 of these, but that
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