International Students’ Crucial Contributions
Barry Canton is a good example of a new breed of entrepreneurs who U.S. policymakers should know. Canton was accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002 as an international student from Ireland with a goal of obtaining a PhD in biological engineering. At MIT, he and other classmates became passionate about the potential of using organisms in new ways.
In 2008, Canton, along with three peers and an MIT professor, formed Ginkgo Bioworks, an organism design company that is engineering microbes to replace traditional fertilizers and designing enzymes to produce food and beverages in new ways.
Canton is the head of foundry at Ginkgo Bioworks, based in Boston, Massachusetts, which has 200 employees and is valued at $1 billion. However, had Canton not had the opportunity to study in the United States and meet his future business partners, the company and its economic and innovative contributions would not be making such a remarkable impact today.
New enrollment of international students at U.S. universities has declined since 2015, according to the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report, and one reason for this shift is a lack of urgency among U.S. policymakers to fix the problem of falling enrollment. Several initiatives proposed or implemented by the Trump administration have made it more difficult for international students to stay or work in the United States, and members of Congress have not objected strongly enough to cause administration officials to reconsider the policies.
Some policymakers lack a sense of urgency
