America needs to start being similarly strategic in its immigration policy. We need more well-educated migrants with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and math. Sadly, American training in secondary school falls short of what many students get overseas, which may be one reason why foreign-born students dominate STEM degrees at the college and graduate school level. Maintaining our competitive edge as a tech-driven global economy will require more skilled STEM workers. New immigrants with STEM background are some of the most innovative people in America and are more prone to entrepreneurship—they include Tesla's Elon Musk and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
But we also need more unskilled migrants to help relieve the labor shortage we are still grappling with, as many work in hospitality and construction. Our need for less-educated immigrants will become more apparent as the population ages and we need more healthcare workers.
Offering more permanent-resident visas may be hard to do politically right now. An alternative is to reform the temporary migrant program. Currently people can come to the U.S. as high-skilled workers if they are sponsored by an employer on an H1-B visa, which can be converted to permanent status. But the number of H1-B visas is capped at 65,000 each year, plus an additional 20,000 for students who complete U.S. graduate degree programs. These numbers fell off during the pandemic. We should offer far more high-skilled worker visas each year and provide working visas that can convert to permanent status for anyone who completes a college or graduate degree at a U.S. college or university in a STEM field.
Expanding lower-skill migration will be harder, because it can reduce wages for lower-skill Americans who already face a lot of economics pressure. But there are shortages in many jobs Americans are reluctant to do, from agricultural work to home health care. Just like the H1-B, we can offer temporary work visas sponsored by employers of low-skill migrants. These workers also deserve the ability to convert their temporary visas into green cards.
This may sound divisive, but it needn’t be compared with other amnesty programs. It offers a pathway to citizenship to people who came to the U.S. legally and have demonstrated the desire and ability to work and contribute to the economy. It may also reduce some illegal migration since many undocumented migrants cross the border because they don’t have a legal way to come here.
We saw during the pandemic what America without immigrants looks like: It meant fewer workers that we rely on, which contributed to labor shortages and rising prices. In the U.S., illegal migration commands almost all the attention, and it is an important issue. But it's a distraction from the more critical questions of what our national priorities should be if we want to remain competitive in the global economy.
Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.