Should the U.S. Admit More Foreign Student or Scientist and High-Tech Employees

The U.S. has historically been very friendly to immigration. However, these days there are a lot of debates about whether a policy change is required to restrict the inflow of skilled immigrants. These debates are based on the fact that the natives are losing jobs to the foreigners who are more skilled, work for lower wages and for longer hours. However, this policy change would be disastrous to the growth of the country. If we go back in history, skilled immigrants have created a lot of big companies in the country, thus creating jobs for hundreds of thousands of Americans; the US still faces a shortage of skilled workers in many fields. Also, it is seen that the children of immigrants have created some of the biggest companies. So, the US needs to develop a policy that accepts the skilled immigrants from foreign nations and preventing the educated, skilled students from going back to the respective countries.

The major reason why there should be an inflow of skilled immigration is because immigrants, in general, are very ambitious and dedicated towards their work. Similarly, skilled immigrants come here, work hard, set up their own companies and eventually provide employment to the natives. For example, a report by Partnership for a New American Economy states that more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by the immigrants or their children (Anderson, 2). These Fortune 500 companies hire tens of thousands of citizens and are an integral part of the economy. Another report that backs up the same fact stated that most of the U.S. science and tech companies founded between 1995 and 2005, had chief executives or lead technologists that were foreign born. This report also stated that these companies generated $52 billion dollars in revenue and employed 450,000 people in 2005(Preston, 6). Also, giant companies like Intel, Google, eBay and many more were founded by non-residents.

It has been proven many times that the United States still has far less number of qualified citizens to maintain its competitive edge over the rest of the world in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. One good source to fulfill this deficiency would be to hire the students from the American universities which hold advanced degrees in the same fields. But again, more than 50 percent of these students are foreign born (Conde, 4). But if these students are sent back to their respective countries, who have also used the high end infrastructure and resources available here, that would be a big mistake. These skilled students will set up new companies, or work in already set companies in their own countries in their respective fields which will ultimately give a major competition to the country in the long run.

These highly qualified, educated and skilled immigrants will tend to make their future generations highly educated too. A lot of the greatest American brands like Apple, Google, AT&T, Colgate, eBay,