Immigration Policy Levers for US Innovation and Startups

Kerr, Sari Pekkala; Kerr, William R.

doi:10.3386/w27040

Cited by 20 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Our theoretical results provide immediate guidance on how the processing order of these caps, and how the choice to apply a single priority or to implement independent priorities, would influence the rate of admission of the workers targeted by such a cap. For more detailed discussion of these (and other) reform proposals, see Kerr and Kerr (2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When discussing "applicants" we refer to the workers that would receive these visas. Note, however, that H-1B system is "employer driven," meaning that companies initiate the application process on behalf on the workers that they want to employ (for further discussion, seeKerr and Kerr, 2020). Also note that H-1Bs associated with certain employers (e.g., institutions of higher education, research-or education-related nonprofits, and government research organization) do not count towards the legislated caps.3 According to the Federal Register, "Congress did not specify any procedures for implementation or dictate the manner in which USCIS should allocate H-1B numbers made available pursuant to the new exemption"(Federal Register Vol.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Immigration Lottery Design: Engineered and Coincidental Consequences of H-1B Reforms

Pathak¹,

Sönmez²

2020

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In 2005, the U.S. Congress legislated that the H-1B visa program create 20,000 annual slots reserved for advanced-degree applicants. Since then, the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS) has used visa allocation rules that comply with this legislation. Following a directive in the April 2017 Buy American and Hire American Executive Order by President Trump, USCIS tweaked its H-1B visa allocation rule in 2019. While remaining in compliance with the legislation set forth in 2005, the USCIS estimated that the 2019 rule change would increase the number of higher-skill awards by more than 5,000 annually at the expense of lower-skill awards. The rule change was explicitly engineered for this objective. In this paper we characterize all visa allocation rules that comply with the 2005 legislation and use this framework to analyze the rules that have been deployed in the interim. Despite specifying rigid caps, we show that the legislation permits a range of rules that can change the number of high-skill awards by as many as 14,000 in an average year. Of all rules that comply with the legislation, the 2019 rule adopted by the Trump administration maximizes the rate of high-skill awards and minimizes the rate of low-skill awards. However, two previous and relatively unknown changes to the H-1B visa allocation rule resulted in more substantial changes to this distribution. These earlier reforms, however, were motivated by logistical considerations, potentially without understanding of their distributional consequences.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Immigration Lottery Design: Engineered and Coincidental Consequences of H-1B Reforms

Pathak¹,

Sönmez²

2020

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“…According to certain estimates, immigrant inventors' contribution to patent activity is higher than that of natives (Kerr, Kerr, 2020b). The most active innovators (with more than 200 registered patents to their credit) emigrate five times more often than their less productive colleagues, thus positively affecting innovation activity in their places of relocation (Akcigit et al, 2016;Zacchia, 2018).…”

Section: The Role Of Foreign Talent and Factors Affecting Internation...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Relocation as a Driver of Innovative Activity: A Global Study of Unicorn Founders’ Migration

Kutsenko¹,

Tyurchev²,

Ostashchenko³

2022

Foresight and STI Governance

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This paper investigates the migration flows of uni-corns – private companies that achieve a market value of at least one billion USD within ten years. This concept was recently introduced by professional investors but has actively entered the global expert and political agenda. The ability of national innovation systems to grow unicorns has become a new hallmark of success. This study uses the most complete sample of companies as of July 2022 (1,357 unicorns), for each of them we identified the founders, their countries of birth, and the educational institutions they graduated from.Among the main results, it is revealed that 40% of billion-dollar companies were created with the participation of foreign founders. The authors identified three country groups depending on the founders’ migration flows direction: “attracting” unicorns, “growing on their own” and “losing everything”. A comparative analysis of countries’ innovation profiles made it possible to identify the unicorn growth and attraction factors. It is emphasized that universities are a significant resource for both strategies, since most of the founders graduated from the leading world universities and every third foreign entrepreneur was educated in the country of migration. It is shown that the strategy of attracting foreign founders complements the growth strategy and could provide the main flow of unicorn founders. The authors noted that the leading unicorn countries are actively involved in the global migration flow: they not only attract the founders, but also act as their largest suppliers. The authors put forward recommendations for attracting unicorn companies.

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“…The role of migration on innovation is another important channel that can either directly or indirectly impact incumbent workers—for example, creating jobs or increasing productivity. International research in this area is picking up (for example, Kerr and Kerr (2020) for the US; Blit, Skuterud and Zhang (2020) examining Canada; Bosetti, Cattaneo and Verdolini (2015) for Europe), but reasonably sparse for Australia (Crown, Faggian and Corcoran 2020a 5 ; Jensen 2014). 6 All of these factors will influence how migration impacts employment and wages of incumbent workers.…”

Section: Gaps In Current Australian Studies and Proposed Future Direc...mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Preliminary Literature Review on the Effect of Immigration On Australian Domestic Employment and Wages

Boucher¹,

Breunig²,

Karmel

2022

Australian Economic Review

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The effects of immigration on domestic Australian employment levels and wages are ongoing and controversial topics. While this topic has been considered extensively in other countries, in particular the United States and the United Kingdom, these findings have limited application to Australia given differences in immigration settings between these contexts. We review the existing literature and conclude that further research in the Australian context is needed given its high rates of both permanent and temporary immigration, its complex visa structure, the unusual nature of its industrial relations system and the geographical concentration of its population. In particular, more attention to the temporary migrant population is required in future studies.

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Immigration Policy Levers for US Innovation and Startups

Cited by 20 publications

References 58 publications

Immigration Lottery Design: Engineered and Coincidental Consequences of H-1B Reforms

Immigration Lottery Design: Engineered and Coincidental Consequences of H-1B Reforms

Relocation as a Driver of Innovative Activity: A Global Study of Unicorn Founders’ Migration

A Preliminary Literature Review on the Effect of Immigration On Australian Domestic Employment and Wages

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