Business and the Workforce
Immigrants not only bring diverse skills and perspectives to the U.S. workforce, they often fill employment gaps in crucial fields. We advocate for expanded work visas and related programs so our labor force can continue to benefit from immigrant workers and remain competitive in the global economy
The Politics of Skill: Rethinking the Value of “Low-Skilled” Immigrant Workers
The political discourse surrounding the incorporation of immigrants into the U.S. labor market tends to sort immigrant workers into two broad and mutually exclusive categories: high-skilled workers who are valued by many for their contribution to economic growth, and low-skilled workers who are viewed by some as causing a glut in the U.S. labor market and thereby displacing low and middle-income native-born workers. For the most part, these categories are structured around formal education. Workers possessing a level of formal education equal or superior to the median in the United States are on one side of this divide, while workers with less formal education than that threshold are on the other. Most current proposals favor expanding immigration opportunities for those immigrants with high levels of formal education. Read More
Always in Demand: The Economic Contributions of Immigrant Scientists and Engineers
With the U.S. economy in the midst of a prolonged slump, it’s hard to believe that any industry would actually benefit from having more workers. But that is precisely the case when it comes to those industries which depend upon highly skilled scientists and engineers. The United States has long faced a dilemma in this respect: the U.S. economy is capable of absorbing more high-tech professionals than the U.S. educational system produces. That is one reason so many U.S. scientists and engineers are immigrants. In “STEM” occupations (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), the foreign-born account for 26.1 percent of workers with PhDs and 17.7 percent of those with master’s degrees. Even more U.S. scientists and engineers would be immigrants if not for the arbitrary limits imposed by the U.S. immigration system, particularly the inadequate supply of green cards and H-1B visas. Given that STEM professionals tend to create jobs through their innovative work, such limits are economically self-defeating. Immigrant scientists and engineers create new jobs. Read More
Lamar Smith Introduces New Agricultural Twist to His Anti-Immigrant Agenda
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has added a novel new twist to his anti-immigrant agenda: letting more immigrant workers into the country. In defiance of logic, the man who believes that immigrants merely steal jobs from U.S. citizens now wants to import migrant agricultural workers. At a hearing today of the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement, Rep. Smith rolled out his latest legislative proposal, called the “American Specialty Agriculture Act” (H.R. 2847). The bill would create a new “H-2C” visa for temporary agricultural workers to replace the existing H-2A program, and would allow growers to bring in up to 500,000 of these workers each year. Read More
Report: New American Fortune 500
Our report on “The ‘New American’ Fortune 500” explores the impact that immigrants have on our national economic development. The report includes the latest research on the business contributions immigrants have made throughout all sectors of the economy. Some of the key findings in the report include: More than 40% of… Read More
Press Release: New Report from the Partnership Finds That More Than 40 Percent of Fortune 500 Companies Were Founded by Immigrants or Their Children
Partnership Co-Chair Michael Bloomberg Discusses Need for Immediate Passage of Immigration Reforms to Fuel Economic Growth and Create Jobs at Council on Foreign Relations The Partnership for a New American Economy today announced the release of “The ‘New American’ Fortune 500,” a new report that finds that more… Read More
Immigrants in America: More Skilled and Educated Than Ever Before
Washington D.C. – Today, the Brookings Institution released a new report, The Geography of Immigrant Skills: Educational Profiles of Metropolitan Areas, which finds that more working-age immigrants hold college degrees than lack high-school diplomas. This newly-released data has broad implications for an immigration debate that is driven largely by… Read More
Federal Court Decision Protects H-1B Employees from Wrongful Arrest
Washington D.C. – A recent ruling from a federal judge in Connecticut confirmed that—as the American Immigration Council (AIC) and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) argued in an amicus brief—the government may not arrest H-1B employees for whom timely-filed extension applications remain pending. The decision in… Read More
The U.S. Economy Still Needs Highly Skilled Foreign Workers
It might seem that persistently high unemployment rates over the past few years have rendered moot the debate over whether or not the United States really “needs” the highly skilled foreign workers who come here on H-1B temporary visas. But the demand for H-1B workers still far outstrips the current cap of only 65,000 new H-1B visas that can be issued each year. In fact, from fiscal year 1997 to 2011, employers exhausted this quota before the fiscal year was over (except from 2001 to 2003, when the ceiling was temporarily increased). As a number of studies make clear, the presence in a company of highly skilled foreign workers whose abilities and talents complement those of native-born workers actually creates new employment opportunities for American workers. Yet the arbitrary numerical limits placed on H-1Bs are incapable of responding to the changing demand for H-1B workers. This is unfortunate, given that the international competitiveness of the U.S. economy will continue to depend heavily on the contributions of H-1B professionals and other high-skilled workers from abroad for many decades to come. Read More
Visa Programs for High-Skilled Workers
On behalf of AILA, the American Immigration Council, in cooperation with counsel at Steptoe & Johnson LLP, filed a FOIA lawsuit against DHS and USCIS in July 2010 seeking the public release of records concerning agency policies and procedures related to fraud investigations in the H-1B program. Read More
Why Immigrants Can Drive the Green Economy
The 2000 Census found that immigrants, while accounting for 12 percent of the population, made up nearly half of the all scientists and engineers with doctorate degrees. Nearly 70 percent of the men and women who entered the fields of science and engineering from 1995 to 2006 were immigrants. So it should come as no surprise that immigrants will help drive the green revolution. America's young scientists and engineers, especially the ones drawn to emerging industries like alternative energy, tend to speak with an accent. Yet, the connection between immigration and the development and commercialization of alternative energy technology is rarely discussed. In IPC's lastest Perspective on Immigration piece, Richard T. Herman and Robert L. Smith explain how policymakers envision millions of new jobs as the nation pursues renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power, and hightlight the voices that warn that much of the clean-technology talent lies overseas, in nations that began pursuing alternative energy sources decades ago. Read More
America's story is an immigrant story.
