It’s key to make up short-term deficits in our education system.

Attracting and securing highly skilled foreign-born talent has played a vital role in U.S. innovation and competitiveness by making up for the deficits in the current U.S. education system in turning out sufficient AI talent. Indeed, 66 percent of students in America’s top AI PhD programs are foreign born, more than 50 percent of computer scientists employed in the United States are foreign born, as are about 65 percent of Silicon Valley computer and mathematics workers, and 66 percent of the “most promising” U.S.-based AI start-ups have at least one immigrant founder.69

Given the importance of foreign-born AI workers to U.S. innovation success in AI, the United States needs policies to strengthen and expand the immigration pipeline that allows highly trained AI talent to innovate in the United States, including foreign STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates of U.S. colleges and universities. But while many competitor nations, including the United Kingdom, China, Canada, France, and Australia, have adopted flexible immigration policies to attract foreign talent in AI and other technical fields, the U.S. immigration system has remained largely the same for the last 50 years. These outmoded visa laws, as well as recent anti-immigrant rhetoric and international competition for AI talent from other countries, are causing many international AI scientists and engineers to look outside the United States for education and employment.