The Contributions of High-Skilled Immigrants

This policy brief offers an occupational profile of foreign-born professionals and highlights their contributions to the U.S. economy. It examines where highly skilled immigrants come from, how they enter the country, what kind of talent they bring, their effects on various sectors, and their patterns of integration.

Approximately 30 percent of high-skilled foreign-born arrivals before 1970 were from Europe, while nearly half of those who arrived in the 1990s were from Asia, reflecting a shift in immigrant inflows. The direct modes of entry for these workers included employer-sponsored green cards and temporary work visas. In addition, many immigrants joined the high-skill workforce indirectly after gaining admission to the United States through student visas or family reunification visas. The brief shows that these immigrants are heavily represented in the medicine, technology, engineering, and science fields, as well as in occupations that have a bearing on national security. Among high-skilled professionals, the foreign born are more likely to have an advanced degree than their native counterparts.

While the scholarship on the effects of high-skilled immigration on natives is relatively limited, research shows that immigrants and the U.S. born appear to compete within narrowly defined occupation categories while seeming to complement each other across different occupations. Furthermore, immigrants appear to raise labor productivity and create jobs for natives in several industries, as demonstrated by Silicon Valley technology firms.