- Immigration
The United States has long benefited from attracting and retaining top international scientists, technologists, and engineers who first come to our country as university students, especially at the graduate level. But as detailed in a new policy brief I co-authored with economist Michael Clemens and policy expert Jeremy Neufeld, this “front door” international STEM talent pipeline through the nation’s universities is at risk. White House efforts to block this pipeline will undermine the US STEM workforce and economic growth. We estimate that new policies will reduce the “front door” pipeline for STEM talent by at least a third, which will mean a less skilled domestic workforce, slower growth, and an economy smaller by about $240 billion to $481 billion per year.
The pipeline of international students authorized to work in the United States for postgraduation practical training is the single largest source of high-skilled foreign talent into the American economy. Other immigration programs, like H-1B and employment-based green cards, largely serve in practice to retain talent that has already entered the workforce through international student practical training after graduation from a US university. Foreign-born professionals account for 30 percent of the entire high-skilled US STEM workforce—and of these, about 63 percent first arrived as international students. Demand for STEM PhDs in the private sector has boomed, growing more than 100 percent over the last decade in many industries; 49 percent of STEM PhDs in the United States are foreign-born, and 71 percent of them first arrived as international students.
That there is a case for retaining the talent our universities produce is the consistent conclusion of expert bodies convened to assess American technological leadership. The 2020 report from the House Republican China Task Force identified competition for high-skilled talent as a first-order strategic concern, and it found that the US must “retain the best and brightest minds to contribute to the US economy and drive US productivity,” as did the 2021 final report from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, and the 2023 report from the bipartisan House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, in a 2024 study commissioned by the Department of Defense, called for a whole-of-government strategy to retain foreign-born STEM graduates of American institutions.
Nevertheless, we expect the Trump administration to act in the coming months on its promise to eliminate or restrict access to postgraduation work authorization for international students completing degrees in the United States. The administration will seek to limit access to optional practical training (OPT), which has allowed international students to work in the US postgraduation since the program’s inception over 75 years ago. And now the administration has published a new regulation establishing new limits on how long international students can stay in the US, eliminating the so-called “duration of status” policy that for the last 45 years has permitted international students to know when they enter that they will be able to complete their academic programs and OPT. Absent case-specific requests to the government, a student’s status will expire before they can secure OPT, often in the middle of their academic program. Moreover, later this year the Department of Labor is expected to finalize a new proposed rule to sharply raise wage requirements in the H-1B and employment-based green card programs that may make hiring many international students postgraduation prohibitively expensive for companies and nonprofits wanting to hire early-career talent.
Together, these changes will almost certainly deter future international STEM talent from coming to the United States. A recent survey of current international students and postdoctoral fellows, mostly in science and engineering, found that, had they known in advance about these stringent new restrictions, about half would “probably” or “definitely” never have come to study in the US.
Starting in 2025, a suite of actions designed to reduce the number of international students who enroll at US universities and transition into the labor market has cut down visas issued to new international students by about one third. But with the expected actions to codify binding regulations to restrict OPT, eliminate “duration of status” and significantly raise required wages, this momentary decline could become lasting. Economic research shows that a sustained one-third decline in the annual flow of foreign STEM graduates from US universities into the US labor force would shrink the high-skill STEM workforce by 6.2 percent overall and by 11.5 percent at the PhD level.
Economic analysis (ZIP file) implies that such a decline would cut the annual growth rate of total factor productivity (TFP) by 0.08–0.16 percentage points. After a decade, real US gross domestic product (GDP) would therefore be 0.8–1.6 percent smaller than it would otherwise be—an annual loss, at current GDP, of $240 billion to $481 billion, or the equivalent of losing a midsized state like Wisconsin or Utah. This conservative estimate assumes that the one-third decline in students arriving will not be aggravated and compounded by increased departures of those who do arrive.
Cutting off the international talent pipeline that supports and complements American STEM experts harms US leadership in pioneering the next frontier of quantum innovation, advancing artificial intelligence innovation, and making progress in other critical fields. As a matter of strategic and technological competition, we should protect, not break, the international talent pipeline.
Amy M. Nice is a distinguished immigration fellow at Cornell Law and distinguished immigration counsel at the Institute for Progress.
