Right now, U.S. needs more skilled refugees

Immigration restrictions hit hard as U.S. depends on foreign workers

The United States is about to start running out of one of its most valuable resources: skilled immigrants. But it can alleviate that shortage by letting in lots of talented refugees, just as it did in the 1930s and after the Second World War.

The coronavirus pandemic has given U.S. President Donald Trump the cover he needed to bar many green card holders and applicants, H-1B workers, other skilled workers and foreign students from the country. Even before the pandemic, Trump’s policies and rhetoric had sharply curtailed the net inflow of immigrants. A new report by the National Foundation for American Policy, a think tank, estimates that legal immigration to the U.S. (most of which is of the skilled variety) will be 49 per cent lower in 2021 than in 2016. Even that estimate is probably too optimistic because it assumes that employer-sponsored and immediatefamily immigration will rise.

This is a tragedy and a disaster for the U.S. Trump’s supporters might not realize it, but the country is highly dependent on the talents and effort of foreign workers. For example, U.S. technological and industrial leadership is dependent on university research, which is mostly carried out by graduate students. In many critical fields, these students are mostly from overseas.

Foreign-born professors are also indispensable. In life sciences and medicine, which are critically important in emergencies like the current pandemic, the NFAP report notes that 56.6 per cent of researchers are foreign-born. This includes many of the people now racing to find a coronavirus vaccine.

More generally, the medical system is also critically dependent on foreign-born workers:

Curtailing the flow of skilled immigrants into the U.S. will also reduce tax revenue and make it more difficult to support an aging population.

Immigration restrictionists will argue that the loss of foreign-born talent is a good thing — that more research and professional jobs will now go to native-born Americans, and that the U.S. will invest more in educating its own young people. Both of these claims are almost certainly false. Foreign students pay high tuition that allows universities to more cheaply educate native-born Americans; kicking them out will wound an already imperiled U.S. university system.

Where, then, will the U.S. get its skilled immigrants? It will have to resort to opportunism, scrounging for them anywhere it can. With traditional channels to attract talented workers out of favour, it will have to find people for whom staying in their home countries is too dangerous, and offer them refuge.

These could include political dissidents, who tend to be educated. It could also include ethnic and religious minorities fleeing persecution. For example, the U.S. could let in large numbers of people from Hong Kong, where the Chinese government is carrying out an intensifying crackdown.

In a world that is often authoritarian and brutal,by letting in persecuted individuals, the U.S. can do a good deed, enhance its battered international standing and help sustain its technological and industrial strength.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.