Immigration is key to America’s unique advantages.
Anderson 21 [Stuart Anderson is the executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-partisan public policy research organization focusing on trade, immigration and related issues based in Arlington, Virginia. From August 2001 to January 2003, he served as Executive Associate Commissioner for Policy and Planning and Counselor to the Commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Before that he spent four and a half years on Capitol Hill on the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, first for Senator Spencer Abraham and then as Staff Director of the subcommittee for Senator Sam Brownback. 3-3-2021, "AI Commission: Immigrants Key To America’s Tech Competitiveness," Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/03/03/ai-commission-immigrants-key-to-americas-tech-competitiveness/?sh=26a2b3cd6d23 aawh]
While the Trump administration treated foreign-born professionals as a threat, enacting numerous obstacles and even bans on their entry into America, the report states, “The United States benefits far more from the immigration of highly skilled foreign workers than other countries.” According to the report, “In 2013, the United States had 15 times as many immigrant inventors as there were American inventors living abroad. By contrast, Canada, Germany, and the U.K. all maintain a net negative inventor immigration rate. Compared with other U.S. advantages in the AI competition—such as financial resources or hardware capacity—this immigration advantage is harder for other countries to replicate.”
The report identifies several problems with the current U.S. immigration system, including international students becoming more likely to study in other countries and the long waits for employment-based immigrants for green cards, which are in some ways connected. As this recent article explains: “Without a change in immigration law, it will be sometime in the year 2216—195 years from now—when the last person born in India waiting today in the employment-based immigrant backlog is expected to receive a green card.”