Immigration Reform and Attracting Foreign Talent

As Congress considers a flurry of immigration proposals and the debate on immigration reform heats up on Capitol Hill, one issue has taken center stage: What must be done to ensure that our immigration system keeps pace with the global economy? A key part of the answer lies in expanding the United States’ ability to attract, as President Bush has put it, “the best and brightest” from around the world. International students and scholars are a key part of the pipeline of skilled talent from outside our borders that fuels our economy, boosts our ability to innovate, and ensures our leadership in the global economy.

The reality is that today, prospective students outside our country have myriad opportunities for study, employment, and life in countries across the globe. Many countries are aggressively recruiting them and are adjusting their immigration and work laws to create additional incentives for them. People, like technology and information, are crossing borders with unprecedented freedom and flexibility. To succeed in attracting knowledge, innovation, and skills from around the world, we must, through our immigration laws and visa policy, create and support a climate that encourages the contributions of foreign talent.

Several key aspects of U.S. immigration law stand in the way of doing this:

• Current law requires applicants for student and scholar visas to prove that they have no intention of remaining in the United States after graduation. While many foreign students do want to go home after graduation, we know that it is good for our country that some of them want to stay here to use the knowledge they gained at our universities. At a minimum, we must act now to make it possible for foreign students earning advanced degrees in key fields to have the option at the time they apply for their visa to declare an interest in working in the United States after graduation.  
  
  In the long run, however, we must rethink the idea that the possibility that a student or scholar might want to stay in the United States should disqualify them for a visa. This concept is inconsistent with today’s realities and is not an effective tool of visa policy. It assumes the fiction that all students want to permanently immigrate to the United States; it requires the consular officer to make a virtually impossible judgment call about a person’s intentions in the course of a minutes-long interview; and it is a clumsy and unnecessary instrument for visa denial. Most significantly, it prevents the United States from benefiting from the contributions of foreign students who might want to stay here, whether for the long term or for a few years—not only those in the strategic fields we know are important for our economy today, but also talent from  across the entire spectrum of academic study. We cannot anticipate the nature of the next crisis, nor the tools we will need to address it. Foreign graduates in all fields of study are important potential contributors to U.S. competitiveness, security, and leadership in the world.
  

• There are artificial annual caps on the numbers of visas for skilled foreign workers, which are reached early each year and leave many employers stranded in their search for qualified talent to fill key jobs. Businesses look to higher education institutions when they recruit employees, and they rely on foreign students, especially in the sciences, technology, engineering, and math (the so-called “STEM” fields) to fill in the gaps left by the shortage of qualified American graduates. As we work to encourage more of our own students to pursue study and careers in these fields, foreign students are also a crucial part of the equation. We must revise the cap system so that qualified, talented foreign students who want to work in the United States are available to U.S. employers that want to hire them. Otherwise, this talent will go home—or to another country that is more welcoming.

• The U.S. immigration system lacks the capacity to accommodate the international nature of scientific inquiry, academic collaboration, and business, putting us at a competitive disadvantage in the world. The very concept of “immigrating,” as it is traditionally defined, is increasingly beside the point for students, scholars, and workers who are globally mobile. They may live in one country for a while, later move to another, and then return to their home country—or follow some entirely different combination of these options. Temporary immigration status has evolved into a channel to permanent immigration and, indeed, the right path for many visitors to our country may lie somewhere in between. We must reform the U.S. immigration system—
  grounded in concepts established 50-plus years ago—to take these realities into account. Our immigration regulations and procedures are simply too rigid to provide streamlined, effective means of moving across borders. If we make it too difficult for people to come and study, work, or live in the United States, we will lose out in the global competition for scarce talent.

In the current debate in Congress, NAFSA is particularly concerned about the potentially harmful impact of proposals that focus on enforcement-only changes to immigration law and present an unduly harsh face to the world. At the same time, a number of promising legislative packages include reforms that would bolster international educational exchange. They include the “Protecting America’s Competitive Edge (PACE) Act,” which creates a new visa category for doctoral students in the STEM disciplines, allowing them to intend to remain in the United States to work or to return home after graduation. The bill also exempts certain highly skilled foreign nationals from the annual numerical limits on obtaining green cards. Similar provisions are part of a proposal by Senator Arlen Specter (R–Penn.), which the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to begin considering tomorrow.

NAFSA will continue to work with members of Congress and the administration to advance our conviction that welcoming international students and scholars is central to our ability to lead in today’s world. International educational exchanges build connections of friendship and collaboration for the United States and attract the best in talent from around the world to support our economic vitality and competitiveness in the 21st century.