Category: Economics

More on the contribution of immigrants to innovation

 Here is a study which estimates that that immigrants are responsible for 32% of aggregate U.S. innovation, with more than half of that effect coming from spillovers to U.S.-born collaborators.

Stanford Business School researchers, using patent records, identified likely immigrants and patenting from 1990 to 2016. They found that immigrants made up about 16% of U.S.-based inventors but produced 23% of patents, 24% of citation-adjusted patents, and 25% patent economic value.

Why the contribution is so large

This can be explained not be brilliance but by demographics. Immigrant inventors are especially productive in the middle of their careers, when inventive output typically peaks. The share of foreign born residents with post graduate degrees is about the same as U.S. citizens (about 15%) but as I have noted before they tend to arrive in a concentration of prime working age (25- 45).

They also appear more likely to work in fast-moving technology sectors and in major innovation hubs. Immigrant inventors are more connected to global knowledge flows. They rely more on foreign technologies, collaborate more often with foreign inventors, and are cited more often abroad.

The authors claim is that immigrants raise the productivity of collaborators. Using premature deaths of inventors as a natural experiment, the authors find that when an immigrant inventor dies, the decline in co-inventors’ productivity is larger than when a U.S.-born inventor dies.

 

Source: The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States

three key issues in Trump administration immigration policy

To capture in relatively few words Trump’s immigration policy, I focus here on three especially contentious fronts: birthright citizenship, refugee policy, and deportation law enforcement. Each involves not only legal rules, but competing ideas about what the United States is obligated to protect, tolerate, or exclude.

Birthright Citizenship

The birthright citizenship dispute centers on the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868, which states that all persons “born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction,” are citizens. The exception has traditionally been narrow: diplomats, hostile occupying armies, and historically certain members of Indian tribes. The January 2025 Trump executive order sought to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to unauthorized immigrants and to some temporary visa holders. According to the presentation, this could affect roughly 250,000 to 300,000 births annually to unauthorized persons and another 50,000 to 70,000 births to temporary visa holders, out of about 3.6 million births a year overall.

The pro–executive order argument tries to read “subject to the jurisdiction” as requiring something like allegiance or domicile, claiming that mere physical presence is not enough. This view has little support in American jurisprudence, and there is no substantial tradition of using voluntary allegiance as a legal test for citizenship at birth. The anti-order view is that jurisdiction means subjection to sovereign authority, not emotional or political loyalty. On that reading, the children in question are plainly within U.S. jurisdiction. The underlying conflict is therefore not just legal but philosophical: whether American citizenship at birth is rooted in territory, as in the older British jus soli tradition, or in parental-qualified membership and more restrictive ideas of belonging.

Refugee Policy

The modern refugee system emerged from the forced displacements of World War II and was codified in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Its core definition describes a refugee as someone with a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. A central principle is non-refoulement: refugees should not be sent back to places where they face persecution.

Against that background, Trump-era policy is a sharp narrowing of refugee admissions. Pre-Trump annual refugee targets had ranged from 45,000 to 125,000; by October 2025 the target had fallen to 7,500, with admissions effectively narrowed to Afrikaners in practice. There are several channels of what the public would regard as refugees: protection for people already inside the United States, such as asylum, Temporary Protected Status, and humanitarian parole. Trump imposed severe actions toward Venezuelans, including efforts to shut down TPS for roughly 600,000 people, close humanitarian parole for 120,000, and accelerate the processing of 300,000 pending asylum claims. Afghans and Ukrainians are separate policy cases. Refugee and humanitarian policy is not one coherent system so much as a series of politically shaped exceptions and restrictions.

Deportation and Law Enforcement

Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates in the interior, while Customs and Border Protection is responsible for the borders. ICE’s central role is removing unauthorized persons, but its practical reach is limited by court backlogs, detention space, state and local cooperation, and the distinction between civil and criminal violations.

The legal distinctions matter. First-time unlawful entry is a misdemeanor; repeated unlawful entry is a felony. Simply being present in the country without authorization, such as after a visa overstay, is generally a civil infraction, though one with major consequences. Smuggling and document fraud are felonies. These categories shape who can be detained, prosecuted, or removed and on what grounds. ICE has in the past removed roughly 300,000 to 400,000 people annually and held around 35,000 in detention. Reaching deportation goals on the order of one million annually would therefore require a major expansion in arrests, detention, court processing, and cooperation from states and localities.  Deportations since January 2025 may be in the 600,000 range, but many uncounted may have left on their own. The total number of vulnerable persons may be around 14 million, but the precise number is impossible to estimate and the legal battles are many. Were the administration to deport one million, that will require arresting many persons who have been year for some time and are employed often for years.

Contested court battlegrounds in enforcement include access to private property, the difference between administrative and judicial warrants, detention without habeas corpus, border turn-backs, and the role of state and local participation under programs such as section 287(g). The broader point is that deportation policy is constrained not only by law and civil liberties, but by the sheer limits of bureaucratic capacity.

 

Global migration since WW II in 400 words

Mass rebalancing of population via migration, an altered wealth-and-people equilibrium, a world where technology is making the movement of peoples easier than ever, wars and demographic trends have driven world migration since WW 2. Government policy has been largely deficit. Japan, for instance, is trying to increase immigration in the face of cultural resistance. U.S. policy is captured. by vested interests. Public dialog has been poor in transparency and vision.

Global Migration in the Modern World

Global migration has become one of the defining forces of modern life.  There are many forms of movement: voluntary migration for opportunity, forced migration through slavery or expulsion, domestic migration within countries, circular migration for work, and flight from war, persecution, state collapse, and natural disaster. Since 1945, major displacing events have included postwar upheaval in Europe, the partition of India, the Korean War, the Vietnam refugee crisis, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Rwandan genocide, and more recent conflicts in places such as Syria, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Venezuela.

Why Migration Has Expanded

Migration has grown not simply because people are desperate, but because movement has become more feasible and more rewarding. The share of the world’s population living outside its country of birth has risen from about 2.5 percent in the 1960s to 3.7 percent in 2026. At the same time, remittances have surged, higher education has expanded dramatically, and international students now number about 7 million worldwide. Transportation, communications, global banking, and diaspora networks all make it easier for migrants to move, remain connected, and support families back home.

Channels of migration have evolved: Germany with Turks, France with North Africans, Spain: with Northwest Africa and Latin America, Britain with the Caribbean, United States with the Caribbean basin. Within these channels are narrower ones, such as the migration of educated, talented and politically adept Indians with roots in East Africa into both the U.K. and the U.S.

Policy, Demography, and the Future

Migration is inseparable from aging societies and weak workforce growth in many advanced countries. Fertility rates are now below replacement in most of the world outside Sub-Saharan Africa, with Bulgaria and South Korea standing out as facing severe futures. Countries such as Japan, Germany, Canada, and the United States face labor shortages or demographic strain.  The U.S. – Indian transnational IT workforce grew since the 1980s.  Canada is the best model of an advanced country which as promoted immigration for economic growth as well as being a generous settler of refugees.

Yet immigration policy often remains confused, politically distorted, or poorly designed. The central challenge, then, is not whether migration will continue, but how states will manage it in a way that balances fairness, national cohesion, and human need.

A touch of evil

Documented reports that the Trump administration is thinking of banning the sending of remittances from the United States to Haiti. The article centers on Johane, a Haitian medical student whose life was transformed by money sent from relatives in New York after she fled gang violence in Port-au-Prince. Those remittances allowed her to continue her education safely and become a doctor serving patients in Haiti. She fears a proposed U.S. ban would cut off that lifeline, leaving her unable to provide medicine and pushing already vulnerable families toward starvation.

One third of Haitian families receive remittances.

On March 2, 2025, DHS wrote in social media: “American dollars should NOT be used to subsidize foreign economies.  Four years of open borders under the Biden Administration allowed 6% of ALL Haitians to enter our country ILLEGALLY. Many of these Haitians sent remittances back to their home country — making up 20% of Haiti’s ENTIRE ECONOMY and taking $6.1 BILLION from America.  We will keep fighting to end this. Under @POTUS Trump and @Sec_Noem, our top priority is to put the safety and prosperity of the American  people FIRST.”

(More reliable sources cited by Documented say that $2B flowed in 2021 from the U.S. to Haiti in remittances, accounting for 16% of GDP.)

Haiti is part of the American basin of cheap labor. I looked at how ten Latin American and Caribbean countries are economically dependent on their citizens who live outside their countries. (See the list at the end, below). For the most part, the great majority of their expatriate citizens are in the United States. Since 1960, they make up 20 million or 45% of all immigrants today. They include 4 of the top 10 countries of origin of American immigration since 1960. The American Basin has a blended average per capita income of $17,000. 21% of the citizens live outside their country. Remittances back to the Basin counties are equivalent to 8% of GDP.

Many foreign-born workers are in high risk jobs

Some jobs, such as logging, have relatively high fatality rate, but few workers. Other jobs are have a lot of workers, many foreign-born workers and many injuries.  Here is a list of six jobs with a lot of workers, a lot of foreign-born workers, and much higher than average injury rates. Many of the workers are unauthorized and their deportation causes a labor shortage. (Lost time injury rate is a useful rate to analyze injury risk.)

Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers.
3.0 million workers. 25% are foreign-born. Lost-time injury rate little more than three times the national average. The high rate reflects frequent lifting, repetitive strain, and handling of heavy materials.

Driver/Sales Workers and Truck Drivers.
3.3 million workers. 18% foreign-born. Lost-time injury rate roughly three times the national average. Injuries are commonly associated with vehicle incidents, loading and unloading freight, and overexertion.

Construction Laborers.
1.2 million workers. This occupation has one of the highest immigrant concentrations in the construction trades, with 28% of workers foreign-born. Lost-time injury rate two and a half times more hazardous than the national average. Typical injuries result from falls, heavy material handling, and the use of power tools and equipment.

Nursing, Psychiatric, and Home Health Aides.
3.6 million workers, making it one of the largest service occupations in the country. 27% are foreign-born, the share even higher in home-health services in many metropolitan areas. Lost-time injury rate more than three times the national average. Most injuries occur during patient handling and lifting, slips and falls, or workplace violence in healthcare settings.

Carpenters.
1.0 million workers 23% foreign-born. Lost-time injury rate two and a half times more dangerous than the national average. Injuries commonly result from falls from ladders or scaffolding, power-tool accidents, and repetitive physical strain.

Roofers.
Roofing is a smaller but highly hazardous occupation employing about 135,000 workers in the United States. 30% foreign-born, one of the highest shares among construction occupations. Lost-time injury rate nearly four times the national average. Roofing work combines fall hazards, heavy material handling, and exposure to extreme weather, making it one of the most injury-prone occupations in the American labor market.

 

One way U.S. competes to attract foreign students

The Optional Practical Training (OPT) program allows international students to work temporarily in jobs related to their field of study as part of their training.  If the  U.S. wants to continue to attract STEM students from abroad, OPT must be kept viable. It is part of America’s dominance over international STEM education — which is slipping away due to competition by Chinese and English language higher ed elsewhere.

Created by regulation, participation rose from 25,000 in 2007 to 300,000 by 2024–2025. These are the numbers of international students actively enrolled in OPT.

It often functions as a bridge into long-term immigration. During OPT, graduates can work for U.S. employers and seek sponsorship for visas such as the H-1B, which in turn may lead to a green card. Half of H-1B visa holders with U.S. degrees previously participated in OPT.

.The impact on American college enrollment is substantial. About 56% of graduates from 2006–2022 participated in OPT, with much higher participation among advanced degree holders and STEM graduates. 68% of STEM graduates and more than two-thirds of PhD and master’s graduates entered the program.

Here is a summary of the program as presented on the website of Babson College.

The rest of the world, notably by English speaking countries, has grown its international student population very fast. Canada had in 2015 about 350,000 international students. Today it has about one million international students.  Meanwhile, international student enrollment in the U.S. marginally increased from one million to about 1.2 million.  (Go here.)

The program should be viewed in the context of the high presence of international students on campus in STEM education.. Over half of graduate students in engineering and computer science in U.S. universities are international. 72% of full-time graduate students in computer and Information sciences are foreign-born. Until recently the U.S. dominated global higher education in some STEM subjects

 

 

Continued labor shortage in seasonal farm workers

The Department of Labor published in the October 2, 2025 Federal Register its analysis and plans for the H-2A program – seasonal farm labor, for the most part. Farms typically hire workers, almost all from Mexico, for 5 – 8 months, with the season starting in earnest in April. The program attracts workers because they are paid about 10 times what they would get locally in Mexico.

DOL said that farms face persistent labor shortages, especially in labor-intensive, seasonal crops such as fruits, vegetables, and nursery production. It estimates that unauthorized labor  at 42% of crop workers. Trump wants to throw all of them out.

The DOL plan of October calls for more H-2A workers – but not enough. In 2010, about 75,000 workers came in under H-2A; in 2025, about 400,000. DOL predicts about 550,000 in 2030. The math is bad for farmers, even with DOL’s plans for more H-2A workers. That is because an expected rise in H-2A workers (which DOL says requires reforms in the program) is per DOL’s own figures going to make up for only half the unauthorized workers to be removed. The rest, presumably, will come from legal Hispanic workers who are experienced in this work. This suggests a tacit deal that ICE lay off mass deportation of farm workers.

In 2015, the minimum H-2A wage was roughly $11–12 per hour. In 2025 the weighted national average wage had risen $17–$18 per hour, with California near $20. The Dept of Labor expects H-2A wages to increase to $22–$24 per hour by 2030. The average median wage across all occupations in the Bakersfield-Delano labor market was probably about $18 in 2015 and about $25 in 2025.  The bulk of jobs held by Americans are year-round and indoors. Median wages in Mexican areas where H-2A workers come from are about $2 an hour.

Farms which use H-2A must provide free housing. Free housing costs the farm an effective cost of about $5 an hour. DOL plans to create a tiered system for wages. That will not eliminate the very high deferential. It will also create a larger gap between H-2A wages and prevailing wages of Americans in the same market area.

Again, Drivers of global migration

The share of the world’s population living outside one’s native country has grown from  2.3% in 1970 to 3.7% today.   The number of persons born in India who live in the U.S. from from 51,000 in 1970 to about 3 million today. Both trends show the impact of access to and costs of transportation, communications, finance and higher education.  The impact of a global educated cohort on economies and societies is a core aspect of life today.

I addressed this topic in a 2022 posting on seven drivers of migration. Here is more meat on the bone, with India as a case study.

Transportation. Containerization reduced the cost of shipping goods by as much as 90% percent over several decades, linking labor markets more tightly to global demand and in the way creating a mobile skilled manufacturing work and entrepreneurial force.  A round-trip intercontinental airplane ticket that once represented a prohibitive share of income became affordable even for middle-income households in emerging economies. Migration no longer required a permanent break. It could be a real option, be repeated, and allow for circular / multi-country residence and work.

Financial infrastructure. The creation of SWIFT standardized cross-border bank transfers. What once required days and paper documentation moved to electronic confirmation. Digital payment platforms and mobile wallets are now reducing remittances from 6% and some hours or days to well under 1% and instant transfer.

Communication. In 1970, a brief international phone call was expensive and an effort. Today,  voice and video calls across continents are effectively free at the margin, carried over internet networks. Information about jobs, wages, and conditions now circulates instantly.

Meanwhile, higher education expanded rapidly across Asia, Latin America, and parts of Africa. University enrollment multiplied several times over, producing large cohorts of engineers, nurses, technicians, and managers. With portable skills and lower mobility costs, many participate in migration patterns that are increasingly circular rather than permanent, linking origin and destination economies in sustained exchange.

Where this shows up most dramatically

Indians in the U.S. For the United States, decennial census tabulations show the India-born population rising from 51,000 (1970) to 206,087 (1980) to 450,406 (1990) to 1,022,552 (2000). It is about 3 million today. Mostly STEM + other high-skill knowledge work: computer/IT, engineering, and other science/technical roles, with a significant presence in health professions and management/business.  My recent posts have shown how entrepreneurial investment in India drew from American experience. The same can be said for Indians in Canada.

An historic pivot in migration of technologists

One role of the U.S. as global driver of innovation is declining due to a global pivot in technology entrepreneurship.

American education and entrepreneurism in technology have been either an essential or at least a primary factor in technology innovation in emerging countries. Now, home grown enterprises in these countries no longer depend as much on the United States. This will affect how much deference will be given in myriad ways to the U.S.

The established model of innovation in information technology is the circulation model. That is, individuals (primarily Asians) study and work in the U.S., often found companies in the U.S. But many return to their country bearing skills and contacts, and found businesses many with bridges into the U.S technology ecosystem.

A 2006 book, The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in the Global Economy by AnnaLee Saxenian says that immigrants in Silicon Valley, mainly Chinese and Indian, built transnational networks linking California with Bangalore, Taipei, and Shanghai, launching startups, mobilizing venture capital, and transferring managerial and technical know-how.

This played an expanding role over 50 -plus years. I described here the transnational workforce of Indians who work, live and invest in both Silicon Valley and in India. This workforce was the demographic foundation of the Indian community in U.S. through today. Key milestones: 1965 immigration reform enabled growth; H-1B visas surged from the 1990s, with Indians claiming 50-70% by the 2000s-2010s. Indian outsourcing firms (TCS, Infosys, Wipro) dominated IT staffing while US companies established major operations in India. Indian-American population grew from 500,000 (1990) to 3 million (2020), forming substantial suburban communities. Recent trends include tightened visa restrictions under Trump, diversification of Indian firms beyond H-1B dependence, and expanded US corporate presence in India employing hundreds of thousands.

One study looked at the “returnee” phenomenon in China. “China’s experience validated this expectation. A body of empirical literature from the late 2000s and early 2010s shows that Chinese returnee-led firms outperform locally founded firms across multiple dimensions, including innovation output, export intensity, speed of internationalisation, and overall firm performance. Many studies  consistently found that overseas experience translated into measurable advantages for entrepreneurial ventures, particularly in knowledge-intensive sectors. These outcomes were reinforced by policy: China complemented market forces with explicit state interventions—returnee-focused incubators, preferential funding, and talent programs—designed to absorb and amplify diaspora expertise.” The paper: “The Indian Returnee Paradox: Why the Diaspora Is No Longer Driving Startup Success.”

 

how foreign-born workers flow into the healthcare sector

This February 2026 article, “Is Immigration Good for Health? The Effect of Immigration on Older Adult Mortality in the United States” is very timely because the healthcare sector is one of the more vibrant sectors in terms of employment. the WSJ writes, “Nearly all of the new jobs added in January were healthcare jobs or positions related to healthcare.” The article says that the healthcare sector – in particular nursing homes – are dependent on foreign-born workers. To the extent that mortality among nursing home residents is affected by the supply of these workers,

Not only do foreign-born workers not displace native born healthcare workers, but they increase the native born healthcare wsatorkforce by providing critical staffing.

One in five frontline nursing home workers are immigrants. One in three home care workers are immigrants.   These workforces are growing at a faster rate than almost all other segments of the workforce.

This is a valuable article as it explains how immigrants flow into the healthcare workforce without displacing native-born workers. I’ve broken that down into five steps:

Step 1. Immigration expands the local pool of working-age adults. When immigration rises in a metro area, the effective supply of potential workers rises with it.

Step 2. Some immigrant origin groups have a much higher propensity to enter health and long-term care jobs, for historical, educational, and credential-transfer reasons. They  include aides, nurses, and physicians.

Step 3. Health care is a labor-constrained sector with persistent shortages. Training pipelines are slow, wages are often administratively, and working conditions deter many native-born workers. When new workers appear, they are absorbed rather than displacing existing staff.

Step 4. Immigrants enter the system at multiple skill levels and over time. Therefore the workforce effects grow gradually rather than appearing all at once.

Step 5. Additional aides and nurses relax bottlenecks inside care organizations. Hospitals and nursing homes can deploy physicians more effectively once support staffing improves.

Saving lives: An increase of 1,000 immigrants causes roughly 142 additional immigrant health-care workers—and about 173 total health-care workers—to appear in the local labor force.