- Immigration
The United States has long had a secret weapon in global economic competition: the ability to attract the world’s most talented people to its universities, companies, and research labs. That advantage is not guaranteed. It depends on policy choices—and those choices have consequences that extend far beyond any individual worker or firm.
The stakes are easy to see in fast-moving fields like artificial intelligence, where global competition is intense and talent is a scarce resource that no amount of government spending can simply conjure. Countries that can attract and retain the best researchers win; countries that cannot fall behind.
Despite these high stakes, the debate over high-skilled immigration is usually framed as a simple question: Is it good or bad for American workers? Examination of the evidence reveals a more complicated picture—one where policy changes meant to help one group of workers can hurt workers in other sectors and decisions made in Washington ripple through labor markets and innovation ecosystems around the world. We’ve partnered with economists and legal scholars to produce a series of interviews and research briefs that bring data to bear on these questions. Here’s what the evidence shows.
H1-B Visa Policy: Wage Gaps and Winners and Losers in the American Workforce
In September 2025, the White House imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas, arguing that American companies were using the program to replace domestic workers with cheaper foreign labor.
Paola Sapienza and Amy Nice discuss the data behind this common claim and find the comparison misleading. When H-1B workers’ salaries are benchmarked against the median salary for an occupation—say, computer science—often an entry-level salary is being stacked against a range that includes workers with twenty years of experience. That’s not a wage gap; that’s a seniority gap. Nice also maps the intensifying debate among academics over how to measure the wage gap.
A historical test case demonstrates who wins—and loses—in the American workforce when high-skilled immigration is restricted. In 2017, H-1B policy was tightened, making it harder for foreign-born computer scientists to work at American firms. Agostina Brinatti tracks the consequences of this shift, finding that many workers who would have come to the United States instead joined Canadian firms, boosting Canada’s tech sector and exports. American computer scientists did see modest wage gains, but broader employment in the United States shrank as companies struggled to find the specialized talent needed to grow and faced new competition from Canadian firms. See Brinatti’s video for more.
The Talent Pipeline: Foreign Students, Startups, and a DHS Rule Change Worth Watching
Foreign students don’t just fill jobs—they start companies and drive American innovation. Giovanni Peri estimates that the roughly 500,000 international graduate students enrolled in US universities at any given time are associated with approximately 4,000 additional new startups per year. The creation of these startups generates additional positive impacts for American workers: International founders typically cofound with US-born classmates, boosting domestic employment in the process. See Peri’s video for more.
In recent months, a new threat to the graduate student–to–entrepreneurship pipeline has emerged. The Department of Homeland Security is considering a rule change that would impose a four-year limit on student visas for PhD students. The agency cites concerns that foreign students crowd out Americans in university admissions (see this conversation between Sapienza and Nice) and alleged visa abuse. Sapienza warns that the PhD cap may deter STEM doctoral candidates from pursuing degrees at American universities, pushing the knowledge and innovation they produce to other countries at a moment when competition for the most consequential breakthroughs—including in artificial general intelligence—is intensifying across the globe.
America’s Immigration Decisions Can Breed Collaboration or Competition Abroad
US immigration policy shapes economies far beyond our borders—and sometimes breeds competition for American industries. In the 1990s, America’s booming IT sector incentivized Indian workers to develop computer science skills, but the H-1B cap limited how many could actually work here. Gaurav Khanna documents that thousands of computer scientists stayed in India, building up that nation’s IT industry until India surpassed the United States in IT exports in the mid-2000s. The Indian workers who did come boosted American innovation, but the visa limits ultimately accelerated the rise of a competing sector abroad. See Khanna’s video for more.
The effects go beyond labor markets. Immigration policy also shapes the global knowledge networks that drive innovation. Marta Prato finds that EU-based inventors whose collaborators migrate to the United States become more productive after their colleagues leave—a phenomenon that is counterintuitive but explicable. When an inventor emigrates, they build new networks in their destination country and get exposed to new ideas, which they transmit back to collaborators at home. The result is a knowledge flow that benefits both countries. See Prato’s interview for more.
Beyond H-1B: Alternative Pathways and Simple Reforms
Nobody is satisfied with the current H-1B system—not employers facing uncertainty in hiring and not foreign applicants whose chances are diminished by a restricted, inefficient lottery. Amy Nice and Paola Sapienza review two alternatives worth considering that would help US firms to effectively compete for talent. The J-1 “researcher” visa is a favorite of universities for visiting scholars, but the private sector can make greater use of it, particularly for STEM R&D positions. For companies seeking STEM PhD talent abroad, the O-1A category is worth exploring before entering an already overcrowded H-1B applicant pool.
Comprehensive immigration reform has stalled in Congress for decades, but targeted changes to policy and enforcement could still improve the system and address legitimate concerns about fairness. Nice and Sapienza discuss enforcing rules that prevent H-1B firms from displacing American workers, creating an alternative visa pipeline for workers in emerging and critical technology fields, and eliminating a tax withholding exemption that some temporary workers currently enjoy.
J-P Conte Initiative on Immigration Series on High-Skilled Immigration
H-1B Visa Policy: Wage Gaps and Winners and Losers in the American Workforce
- Video: Are H-1B Workers Displacing Americans with Cheaper Labor? —Paola Sapienza and Amy Nice
- Op-Ed: H-1B Wage Gaps: Are We Asking the Right Questions? —Amy Nice
- Video: The H-1B Visa Crackdown: Winners & Losers in a Global Economy —Agostina Brinatti
- Research Brief: How US Immigration Policy Affects Foreign Firms and Spills Back to American Workers —Agostina Brinatti
The Talent Pipeline: Foreign Students, Startups, and a DHS Rule Change Worth Watching
- Research Brief: The Contribution of Foreign Master’s Degree Students to US Start-Ups—Giovanni Peri
- Video: Foreign Students & American Entrepreneurship —Giovanni Peri
- Video: Do Foreign Students Take Spots from US Citizens? —Paola Sapienza and Amy Nice
- Op-Ed: Why a Proposed Student Visa Rule Will Harm America —Paola Sapienza
America’s Immigration Decisions Can Breed Collaboration or Competition Abroad
- Video: From Brain Drain to Brain Gain: The Truth About High-Skilled Immigration —Gaurav Khanna
- Research Brief: When US Immigration Policy Helped Create India’s IT Boom —Gaurav Khanna
- Research Brief: What Happens When Inventors Migrate? —Marta Prato
- Video: Migrant Inventors: Powering Innovation at Home and Abroad —Marta Prato
Beyond H-1B: Alternative Pathways and Simple Reforms
- Video: Unlocking Global Talent: The J-1 and O-1A Visas —Paola Sapienza and Amy Nice
- Video: Three Ways Congress Can Fix High-Skilled Immigration —Paola Sapienza and Amy Nice
Isabel Lopez Ysmael is assistant director of the immigration initiative at the Hoover Institution.
