Post by Jayvion Queen. Colgate Class of 2022.

Source: Bokil, S. (2021, April 13). “The economic case for high-skilled immigration.” Harvard Political Review.

In the article, Bokil argues for H-1B visas and supports this with evidence of high-skilled immigration benefiting our economy. One of the fundamental arguments against immigration is that immigrants “steal” American jobs. However, there is no data to support this and some say that immigration, especially high-skilled H-1B workers, actually create jobs for American workers. Bill Gates is quoted as saying “Microsoft has found that for every H-1B hire we make, we add on average four additional employees to support them in various capacities.” It is estimated that each H-1B visa worker creates 1.83 new jobs over the course of the next seven years after immigration. This translates to over 155,000 new jobs being created each year.

Immigrants are also extremely entrepreneurial. As of 2020, forty-five percent of fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants. It has been shown that high-skilled immigrants are eighty percent more likely to start new firms when compared to American workers and firms founded by immigrants have created forty-two percent more jobs than those founded by Americans. We recently discussed in class how when it comes to technology, innovation, and self-employment, immigrants are some of the most innovative people in the country and are more likely to be self-employed than the average native-born citizen. Foreign-born workers are 1.76 percentage points more likely to be self-employed than natives and college-educated immigrants are 0.18 percentage points more likely to establish a new firm with ten or more employees. H-1B visas are a great thing for Americans because high skilled immigration creates so much more than it takes.