Alex Nowrasteh
Alex Nowrasteh
Support from Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, and others was essential to President Donald Trump’s recent reelection. Immigration was a crucial issue to Musk and Ackman, who rightly complained about border chaos. Musk and Ackman emphasized how expanding legal immigration for skilled, entrepreneurial, and ambitious people would be a great boon to the United States. The Trump administration should listen to Musk and Ackman on the benefits of expanding skilled immigration to the United States.
Below is an explanation of the benefits of allowing in more skilled immigrants, an analysis of one problem with the current employment-based (EB) green card system for skilled workers, and several suggestions for expanding and streamlining their entry to the United States.
Benefits of Highly Skilled Immigration
Most immigrants come to the United States for higher wages regardless of their skill level. Those higher wages result from higher demand for their services in the United States compared to other countries. Labor demand is determined by the marginal value product, which is the extra revenue that a firm gains from employing one more worker or the economic productivity of the worker.
In simpler terms, immigrant workers have higher wages in the US because they are more productive here than in their home countries. Skilled workers are more productive and innovative in the United States than in other countries.
The wages from working in the US are so much higher than in developing countries that many have trouble believing it. An older paper by economist Michael Clemens helps show the gap for skilled workers doing the same jobs, on the same teams, and in the same firm when some were lucky enough to win a visa lottery and come to the US and the other workers on their teams stayed in India. The wage gap was $58,000 a year in 2009 for migrants who won the visa in 2007. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/only-48-percent-employment-based-green-cards-went-workers-2023-heres-how-fix