say it didn't play as big of a role as we might have thought because when they shut down the internet, the mobilization grew. so i think that it definitely, i think rather than the looking at this particular event or the particular event in tunisia that created this massive change or the particular event in iran that created mobilization, what we need to look at is the way in which the culture, the society, the economy and the political structure is changing. because all of these information technologies exist within a context, and that context helps to shape what these technologies and tools mean. >> host: and what is that context? is. >> guest: that context is the culture and the economy and the unemployment rates and all of those other things. so the way i look at it, when people become used to using a communicating tool, it changes how they live. and if they have grievances and they feel like they have a chance to express those

grievances whether it's online or in the privacy of their own home, those grievances tend to get expressed. and when those phoenixes collect -- grievances collect to see i'm not alone in this, i've got a million or two million people who feel exactly the same way i do and together we're going to go into the square and challenge the government, the social media tools allowed the egyptian people to reach critical mass in a way that without it they seemed to not be able to do. >> host: professor wheeler, have you been monitoring tweets and et ceteras from other countries such as yemen, jordan, some of the countries that seem to be having a little bit of rebellion? is. >> guest: yes. yemen's an interesting case. 1.8%of the society in yemen has access and that represents more than 2,000% growth from 2000 to 2010. >> host: is it because of poverty or government restrictions? >> guest: it's both. ill literacy, poverty,

government restrictions, put it all together. lack of literacy in english. we're having rebellions in yemen without massive access to the internet, so that would be a case where if you're trying to make a case for social media, you don't want to include yemen in your equation at this point. laugh. [laughter] but jordan, 28%, almost 30% of the society has access to the internet. the king starting in 2000 but going full throttle in 2004 built telecommunity centers throughout the country including in impoverished areas and, again, wants to be part of that digital economy. but it's a double-edged sword. you give people access, and they're going to communicate their demands, and the jordanians want fairly and freely-elected government. the king can stay, he doesn't have to be elected, but his government does need to be. >> host: have you seen any more

governments in the middle east restricting access to the internet or restricting mobile services? >> guest: what i've been observing is the opposite. for example, in algeria the president there is saying we're going to have an end to emergency law coming soon. jordan's king dissolved parliament -- dissolved his cabinet, dismissed his prime minister, put an interim prime minister in place. the syrians, supposedly this weekend, are mobilizing against emergency laws, so it seems like people are trying to learn from from the egyptian/tunisian examples to manage the change in more moderate ways rather than face revolution. >> host: on the other side of this is terrorism and the use of the internet by al-qaeda, etc. is that still a factor? >> guest: yes. and one person i was having a conversation with somebody from within the intelligence community, and he was saying

look at al-qaeda of the arabian gulf, aqag, i guess, is what they're calling it. and supposedly, that group is very actively using the internet for recruitment purposes. they have a journal called inspire, inspire's the name of their journal. and they've just said that they've gotten very skilled at recruiting, especially westerners. jihad jane was supposedly recruited by them. but what i always say to my students is that this is a very, very small percentage of the people in the regions. it's a fringe movement, and really i hope that what's happening in egypt and in tunisia and jordan and yemen refocusing people's attention on the mads and what they're asking for which is the same thing you and i want, freedom, a good job, a good life. >> host: deborah wheeler, what are you currently teaching? >> guest: well, i have a seminar called new world disorder middle east.

[laughter] >> host: why is that important to teach at the naval academy? >> guest: well, we have future officers who within months are going to be in service of this country, and many in the regions that we're talking about today, and it just gives them an opportunity to do a 30-page research paper on a p topic of their choice as long as it relates to that theme in some way, shape or form, so -- >> host: why is it important? >> guest: i think that the middle east isn't going anywhere quickly. i think that it's an area of strategic importance. general petraeus has said that we're interested in oil, we're interested in stability, we're interested in the palestinian/israeli conflict, and those issues are just going to become more important in this information age, so we need our men and women in uniform to be aware. >> host: so, finally, if you had to make a definitive statement about the role of social media in the middle east and in what's happening in egypt, what would that definitive statement as of today be?

>> >> guest: it's a game changer. >> host: deborah wheeler is professor at the u.s. naval academy. we appreciate your participation on "the communicators." >> guest: thanks for having me. >> here's what's coming up on c-span2. >> every weekend experience american history on c-span3. of it's 48 hours of people and events telling the american story. hear first person accounts from people who have shaped america featuring the best-known history

writers of the past decade and travel to important battlefields to learn about key events that shaped an era. every weekend visit college classrooms across the nation as professors delve into america's past during lectures in history. join curators and historians behind the scenes at museum exhibits and historic sites and the presidency, focusing on american presidents' policies and legacies as told through historic speeches and personal insights from administration officials and experts. american history tv on c-span3 all weekend, every weekend. get our complete schedule online and sign up to have them e-mailed to you using our c-span alert. >> utah governor gary herbert gave his first state of the state address as an elected governor on january 26th. he outlined his budget priorities and talked about the issue of states' rights. he first assumed the office in august 2009 when then-governor

jon huntsman resigned to become u.s. ambassador to china. governor herbert was sworn in for two with more years following a special election. from the statehouse chamber in salt lake city, this is 25 minutes. >> ladies and gentlemen of the senate and of the house, citizens of utah, i give you the honorable, his excellency, gary r. herbert, governor of the state of utah. [applause] >> thank you very much. lieutenant governor, president, speaker lockhart, members of the utah legislature, members of my cabinet, utah supreme court justices, the state's first

lady -- my wife, jeanette -- and my fellow utahans, it is, indeed, an honor to join you on this historic evening. on the north wall appears a tribute to the women of utah and those who worked to secure the right of women to vote. over the years many have pioneered the way in this hall including our first female governor, olene walker, but tonight marks the first time a woman leads the utah house of representatives, and i am delighted to be the first governor to say congratulations, madam speaker. [cheers and applause] >> it is fitting and right at a time of international conflict that we recognize those who defend and protect us both on

the battle front abroad and here at home. we appreciate their sacrifice, and we honor their service. one of those whose life was nearly lost is brody young, a state park ranger and, more importantly, husband of wendy young and father to strider, jade and jagger. on the night of november 19th while on patrol at poison spider mesa trail head, he was shot nine times. i spoke with him earlier today. he is healing, and his spirits are strong. while we highlight brody for his heroism, we also acknowledge the service and sacrifice of all other public safety officers and their families. tonight brody and his family are watching this broadcast on television. please join me in honoring brody and all of our dedicated peace officers. [applause]

>> last night our president delivered the state of the union. tonight we focus on utah. i am pleased to say that despite our challenges the state of our state is strong, and its course is sure. it is my desire that the actions we take in this capitol this session will keep our state on the road to recovery and return utah to prosperity. as i survey this great state of utah, i recognize we have challenges and opportunities. while many state t face multibillion dollar deficits, we're fortunate utah's budget -- though difficult -- is manageable. our current unemployment is too high, and many households are hurting. still, utah's unemployment rate

continues to be better than the national average. i understand that more utah families now rely on food stamps, and too many homes have been lost to foreclosure. and we're not out of the woods yet. but the good news is the outlook is improving. fewer people are filing new unemployment claims, housing starts are expected to increase, and the market is showing increased consumer and business confidence. as a state, we are focused on getting people back to work. we have made the tough choices. we have streamlined services, we have modernized, and we've become more efficient. when i began my service to the state as lieutenant governor, there was one state employee for every 122 utah residents, but thanks to the ability of our great state employees to do more with less, there is now one state employee for every 136 utahans. we've done so while continuing to provide the basic services people need while keeping taxes

low. [applause] n. [applause] >> my father was a building contractor. when he was building homes, he always made certain the foundation was strong, the walls were sturdy and the roof never leaked. this session we are tasked by the citizens, the people who hired us to do the job, to make certain the house we call utah is solid and strong. like any good contractor, before he took on a new project my father asked a few basic questions. are we following the blueprints? will the project pencil out? some are we building what the customer wants? i'd like us to keep those questions in mind as we focus on the state's road to recovery and our return to prosperity. like any sound stretcher, utah's future prosperity will be built

upon four cornerstones; education, energy development, job creation and utah's ability to solve its own problems. [applause] education is the first cornerstone because an educated work force is not just critical, it is essential for a prosperous economy. one of utah's strengths is that we have the fastest-growing population in the country. this impacts our classrooms. in the past two years alone, we have added over of 25,000 new elementary school students, but due to declining tax revenues, our schools and our teachers have had to be innovative to absorb that growth. however, we can only add so much water to the soup without diluting the quality. this year we will add another 14,700 students. the good news is that for the first time in three years because of economic expansion we

have the opportunity to fund this growth in our public and charter schools. therefore, in this legislative session funding our children's education must be our number one budget priority. [applause] last year at the state of the state i announced the creation of my education excellence commission. this commission, which i chair, includes leaders and experts across the state across all disciplines including six of your fellow legislators. together we spent hundreds of hours developing this long-term action plan which you have here on your desks. the vision of this plan is that by the year 2020 two-thirds of utahans ages 20-64 will have a postsecondary degree or professional certification. the pattern holds true from dixie state to utah state.

higher education translates into economic success. for example, the university of utah's not just a new pac 12 contender on the playing field, it is a national champion in the classroom and in the laboratory. last year the university of utah surpassed mit to take the top spot in the country for the number of start-up companies with their beginnings in university research. [applause] this extraordinary goal of 66% by 2020 is, indeed, ambitious, and it will not be accomplished overnight. but we must be bold, and we must begin now. that is why this action plan that you have also includes eight specific proposals. the initial steps recommended unanimously by the commission members, proposals that i ask you to look at and address this session. these initiatives include insuring reading proficiency by the third grade and matching

classroom instruction to real world jobs, especially in the areas of science, engineering and math. the pathway to success in postsecondary education which leads to economic prosperity is is -- as an adult begins in elementary school as a child. that is why another of the eight proposals focuses on extended day kickedder garten -- kindergarten. i've listened to teachers and parents explain how this program helps our youngest, most at risk students and improves their ability to meet their future job ready. i've also seen the data. the message is clear: informing in -- investing in our children today benefits all of us tomorrow. [applause] a second cornerstone of utah's

economic viability is one we've taken for granted for far too long, low cost and reliable supplies of energy. utah businesses compete better and are more successful because utah has lower energy costs than most other states. companies relocate to utah and, therefore, create jobs because of utah's affordable and stable electricity. indeed, the cost of electricity in utah is among the lowest of any state, and the price of a kilowatt hour has held steady for the past 20 years. equally important, utah's energy industries create tens of thousands of jobs and pour hundreds of millions of dollars into our economy. tax revenues from energy-related jobs amounted to over $200 million last year alone. utah's been abundantly blessed with massive reserves of energy resources. we are a state that is largely energy independent. in fact, we are net exporter of electricity. while many other states and, indeed, our nation have

compromisedded or abandoned their energy independence, here in utah we will not. [applause] >> we simply cannot put the economic fate of future generations in the peril by relying upon others for our energy needs. but in the world of energy we must face new realities. we must confront new challenges. and we must envision an -- and act upon new opportunities. last year i called for the development of a the ten-year strategic energy plan for utah. i assembled many of utah's brightest and most talented minds from the energy arena. we sought and received a strong public response from many stakeholders in public meetings

around the state. soon each of you will receive the final report. regarding the issue of energy, there are major energy challenges ahead. for example, too few capital improvements have been made to utah's energy infrastructure. billions of dollars will be required to upgrade and expand utah's electricity generation and transmission systems. our reliance upon traditional fuels is being challenged. yes, renewable energy such as wind, solar and geothermal will play an expanding and important role. however, the base load, the very foundation of utah's energy will most assuredly be provided by either fossil or nuclear fuels. [applause] every state, every state has to face that simple reality, and more than 30 states have chosen to include nuclear power in

their energy portfolio. we must begin substantive debate and deliberation of whether there is a place for nuclear energy in utah. [applause] just as i know of utah's extraordinary natural resources, i'm convinced we have even greater human resources. in if utah we have -- in utah we have some of the best energy minds and the greatest expertise of any place in the world. our universities and our industries must rise to the occasion and create new technologies that will make our traditional resources more economically and environmentally viable. in utah we have the spirit of technical ip novation and pioneer determination. that will enable us to keep energy affordable, supplies stable and our economic future secure. the third cornerstone essential to our return to prosperity is all about jobs. my vision for economic development is that utah lead the nation as the best

performing economy and be recognized as a premier global business destination. [applause] in utah we know it as the private sector, not government, that creates jobs. and those jobs are being created through the expansion of home-grown utah companies as well as new companies relocating to our state. some of the most recognized businesses in the world now call utah home, companies like adobe, procter & gamble, ebay, lighthouse foods, disney, goldman sachs and the royal bank of scotland just to name a few. additionally, local utah businesses are expanding like peterson incorporated, nelson laboratories, lydia gym, edwards life sciences, and overstock.com. to accelerate this job creation across the state, we must focus on three key areas. first, we must increase access

to capital for our small and start-up businesses. we must insure that the utah fund of funds created by this legislature three years ago is focused on assisting utah companies. second, we must expand our global vision. utah's export growth is the strongest in the nation. to insure a continued focus on international business, i challenge lou kramer and other international business leaders to double utah exports in the next five years. [applause] third, i urge the legislature to pass senator oakland's business expansion and retention bill to support companies throughout rural utah. [applause] utah's been recognized time and again as a pro-business state

including for the first time in our state's history a number one ranking from "forbes" as the best state for business and careers in be america. [applause] i can tell you, i'm thrilled, but i'm not surprised. we are the best place for business because we have the best people for business. however, the competition is getting tougher. my fellow governors across the country have all promised to improve their state economies. they are gunning for utah's top spot for job growth. to stay ahead of the competition, we must refine, distinguish and promote our competitive advantages. be one of those advantages is our unprecedented partnerships. i thank senator scott jenkins for running legislation to create a governor's economic development coordinating council. this council will insure that the collective efforts of government and the business community are focused on job

withs, jobs -- jobs, jobs and more jobs. [applause] this collaboration will further enhance the colocation of many economic development entities into a building that i am pleased to announce tonight will be utah's own world trade center located here in downtown salt lake city. [applause] two of the most important ways government can nurture a business-friendly environment are, one, keep taxes low and, two, make regulations fair. many states are raising taxes. in utah we are in the enviable position of being able to keep taxes low and still pay for essential services because we saved for a rainy day when times were good knowing a storm would eventually come.

despite this ongoing economic gale, my budget maintains at least $110 million in the rainy day fund and reflects my commitment to keep taxes low. increasing taxes on our citizens and our businesses will be counterproductive to economic recovery. [applause] i understand that the purpose of government regulation is to maintain a level playing field. as a small business owner, i have also experienced the cost and frustration of overreaching and irrational regulation. in order to separate regulations that serve an important purpose from those regulations that serve no purpose at all, i've asked each member of my cabinet to review existing business regulations and determine which could be kept, which should be modified and which will be eliminated. last year i created the governor's commission to optimize state government

chaired by former governor norm bangler. its mission was to conduct a performance audit of every aspect of of state government. after a yearlong review they said, and i quote: one thing is clear, utahans can rest assured that their tax dollars are being spent efficiently and effectively. close quote. but the "money for breakfast" managed state can do even -- best managed state can do even better. that's why we're addressing a commission to make government even more efficient. i invite all citizens to follow the progress we're making because the government of utah belongs to the people of utah. [applause] the final cornerstone we must secure is the spirit of self-determination, the ability to address utah problems with utah solutions.

i firmly believe if we as a state fail to vigorously fight to protect and defend our rights under the constitution, those rights will invariably be seized and you suched -- usurped by the federal government. [applause] >> thank you. i i want to remind -- i want to remind washington, we have a state, not a colony, and i assure you on my watch utah will not stand idly by. [applause]

>> in fact, we and 26 other states are asserting our right and our obligation to say no to an unconstitutional federal health care program. [applause] over the past -- [applause] over the past three years, we have worked closely with you in the legislature to create solutions to reform utah's health care system. we are also taking the lead to rein in outrageous cost increases in federally-mandated entitlement programs before those costs further imi pair our ability to -- impair our ability to fund education and other vital state services. in the election last november, people sent a message that federal domination must give way to mutual collaboration. unfortunately, that message was promptly ignored. two days before christmas while most of us were spending time with family and friends, federal officials at the u.s. department of interior secretly prepared an

order to announce a new wildlands designation on public lands. with no public input, with no state ip put this pronouncement threatens years of collaboration and rural economic progress. let me be clear, this process and the resulting policy are flat out wrong. [applause] ..

brower common goal to secure the best outcomes for all people in this great state. [applause] let me conclude by

saying i get it. i am a parent, i have a grandparent, challenges faced by every utah family including my own of lively topic of discussion when our family gets together every sunday for dinner. i know the pressure on a family and the challenges of running a small family business. i know what the cost of milk is. i know what it is like to worry for my family and i know what it is like to worry for our state. >> we leave the last couple minutes of the state of the state address to go to a discussion on immigration policies needed to attract highly skilled workers. this is just getting underway and is hosted by the brookings institution in washington. >> david is one of the country's most awful riders on entrepreneurship.

he undertook some original works on the role of immigrants in innovation and entrepreneurship and he will discuss where we are now and where we should go in the future. david, you are going to make some opening comments. >> the cue. my pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the co-sponsor of the event, science and technology policy at george mason university. for those of you not familiar with the school, has grown very big very fast. now has about a thousand students some of whom should be in the audience. a pleasure to see them. in january we open the new building on fairfax drive in arlington. we are very excited about it. it is a great new facility for teaching and for events like as

it is taller than the law school which is next door so we are very excited about that. finally emerging from the shadow of the loss will not just figuratively but literally and we hope we will draw on many of you assembled in washington across the river in coming months and years but of course we are also very clear eased to part with organizations on this side of the river especially with brookings. darrell has also done work as many of you know in the field of immigration and high skill migration in particular and our shared interests, exchanges the interaction that produces progress in policy research. pleased to partner with him for this event. our purpose today is to give scholars with active research projects in the area of high school, and innovation, chance to share their ideas. it is a difficult topic. i don't think you will find any

easy answers. there is certainly not consensus among the panel members today but it is an issue that is rising in importance. many views of the president's state of the union where he mentioned the subject and that is gratifying for us to get that kind of attention. i hope you will leave today with a variety of perspectives and some new ideas and i hope you will continue thinking about this challenging set of issues and with that i am turning it back to darrel to introduce the first panel. >> our first panel will address the subject of the best and brightest in academia and beyond. we are pleased to have as moderator, the news feature editor at nature, mitch waldrop. panelists include robert v. hamilton of the nasa goddard space flight center, patrick gaule from the slums school of

management of mit, lindsay lowell, director of policy studies for international migration at georgetown university and on will be on the panel as well. if i could ask our moderator and analysts to come up. >> okay. anyway, here we go. good morning, thank you for coming. david asked me to do this in a

slightly different order than is listed inside the program. we will do it as on the front side of the program. so let's begin with bob hamilton. [inaudible conversations] >> the first speaker we have some logistical challenges here. get the first one loaded and we will be ready to go. pretty good. good morning. my presentation is focused on doctoral degree attainment by students at u.s. universities in the science and engineering fields. this can be considered a form of highly skilled migration for the purpose of education. the percentages are from a paper co-authored by myself and my two

colleagues from george mason university, and thanks to the national science foundation for their support. on a personal note i first became interested in immigration and education in 1989. i just got out of the marine corps and traveled to tokyo to study japanese that a language school. most of -- not too many westerners in the school. mostly korean and chinese students and none of the students spoke english so we had a great chance to communicate in japanese. a tremendous experience but from this experience also gained a great respect for those who leave their friends and family for many years to pursue education in a foreign country. again my talk focuses on science and engineering doctoral attainment at u.s. universities and the time pirko covered in this study is 1994-2005.

and this data was collected from foreign students representing 181 nations in the five fields that study, physical sciences, life sciences, engineering, and computer science and social and behavioral science. during this 12 year period as the screen shows the count was 96,466 foreign doctorates at science and engineering fields in american universities. generally 100,000 students in this 12 year time period obtained science and engineering doctorates at american university's. let's talk about conceptual framework for the talk this morning. this conceptual framework is offered to better understand the phenomenon where foreign students travel to the united states for their science and engineering doctoral degrees. you can visualize a foreign student pipeline for each of the

181 nations to u.s. universities. but also realize the same guidelines or similar pipelines from these 181 nations also extend to other nations which degree grands in universities like australia, canada and european nations. there for the student pipelines to u.s. universities can be viewed as only one component of a global student migratory network and furthered the student pipelines to the united states are facing growing competition from other nations desire in the best and brightest students to attend their home nation universities. it is also to duties -- home education, kindergarten through twelfth grade, and university education in terms of a domestic student education and training pipeline at work prior to the foreign students coming to the united states. all set these foreign students who have attained their science

and engineering doctorates in the united states have traveled a tough road. first they had to pass the often challenging domestic education and screening and selection process and then they had to compete with other foreign students to gain add amendments at a u.s. university. now let's talk about the role of the u.s. universities. as for the u.s. universities and they have played a greater role beyond educating and training for and science and engineering doctorates. the university should also be viewed as a global recruitment and quality-control mechanism that screens and selects the best and brightest of the world's foreign students for edmonton to doctoral programs. elson be noted the u.s. taxpayer has not paid for the foreign student, kindergarten through 12 university education in that the home university--the home nation

picks up the bill for is this so it seems like the united states has gotten a pretty good deal. that is, for governments pay to educate their home nations students and then the u.s. universities have the pick of many of the best and brightest for their own science and engineering doctoral programs. now let's talk about the role of the u.s. government. as for the u.s. government, it highly subsidizes doctoral education to include fat for foreign students the rationale being there are public benefits resulting from this type of education and research and development and innovation will suffer if students are not offered government incentives to stay in the doctoral pipeline a few years more. the u.s. government also wishes to increase thes and it should be noted that the student visa pipeline was disrupted due to the 9/11-2001 terrorist attacks prompting the u.s. congress to

take an interest in helping to establish a new student visa tracking system. for further foreign doctoral students also appear to benefit universities in situations similar to on the job training where these foreign students are employed as relatively low-wage highly skilled research and teaching assistants while they pursue their doctoral degrees. let me get a drink of water. excuse me. of day. as stated, foreign doctoral attainment at you as universities was a state of highly skilled migration and what seems to have generated policy interest has been the relatively large increase in the presence of foreign doctoral students on u.s. campuses in

recent years. has the chart shows in 1980 there were less than 3,000 science and engineering documents in universities. as you see this represented only 16% of the total meaning that 84% of science and engineering doctorates obtained at u.s. universities in 1980 were by u.s. citizens and as you see the chart, numbers change from 1985 to 1994 to 2005. in 1994 the number increased to 7,000 which is 6,950. by 2005 the number exceeded 11,000. this increase the foreign student representation to almost 40% of all doctors obtained at american university's. as the next slide shows it should be noted that there is

variation between the five -- five fields. this is for 2005. as the chart shows, you see a great foreign domination of the engineering field. 61% of all doctorates in engineering in 2005 were obtained by foreign students. on the other end of the spectrum you see life sciences. dirksen senate office building 8% of the doctorates in life sciences were obtained by foreign students meaning 72% if my math is correct, of all doctorates were obtained by u.s. citizens. you see the variation. my point is if you want to study this phenomenon let's talk about five different fields. social behavioral sciences, 21% are obtained by foreign students meaning 79% were obtained by u.s. citizens. the findings of the study are

four nations dominate in science and engineering doctoral of attainment from 1994 to 2005, south korea, taiwan, china and india. if you look at china and india you can -- these are large population countries and the reason there are many chinese and indian chinese and engineering document -- there are large populations. the outlines are south korea and taiwan. with relatively small populations, both of these nations, about 10,000 science and engineering doctorates. mortgage and why are there so many of science and engineering doctorates, a more interesting question is why there are so many south korean and taiwanese documents -- doctorates during

this period. you see the chinese number increased dramatically and south korean numbers were fairly static. the taiwanese showed a large decrease. this chart shows the change in chinese doctorates attainment from 1994 to 2005. let me talk about this. in the engineering field in 1994 only 136 -- only 136 engineering doctorates were obtained by chinese students. by 2005 the number increased tenfold to over 1500. tremendous increase. as you see, the share of chinese doctorates among the foreign population also increased. 36%, life sciences 32%. engineering 39%.

math and computer science, 39%. the chinese representation in social behavioral science is fairly small. the idea is chinese students were less likely to become economists and social scientists and more likely to be chemists, engineers and physicists. that is pretty good. an interesting question. let's talk about engineering one more time. if you look at a 39% share for chinese engineers at 61% share for all foreign students what it means in 2005, one of four documents obtained by chinese students and so on. the question for me is why are so many engineering doctorates on the one hand being obtained by foreign students and some of you being obtained in the life

science class compared to american u.s. citizens? in closing, the best and brightest science and education students in russia and turkey for example will probably become increasingly prized human-resources to be recruited and competed over by developed nations with lower birthrates and increasing pools of talented young people. united states should keep this in mind when formulating its migration policy. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. that was fascinating. we will hold q&a until the end. patrick, i believe you are next. >> thank you. so what i would like to do is

talk briefly in a non technical matter about two research papers i have been working non. the first is about chinese graduate students and joined workers and time permitting also a few words about another project. being helpful about motivation for what i am going to present and let me show you yet more numbers in the same line. if you look at the population of students who finished degrees in the united states and look at where the two got their degrees, there are more students that come from universities in china or university but from cornell and berkeley.

. it is quite surprising if you take someone finishing a degree from you as university is more likely to have done a degree at berkeley or any other institution. this is slightly misleading because many good u.s. universities, not that many good chinese universities and keep in mind the figures presented earlier. chinese students are about 15% from universities which is a difficult number. overwhelmingly chinese students stay in the u.s. to complete their degrees. the corollary of that is a sizable fraction of science and engineering work force born in china. about 9% were born in china as

of the 2010 census. if you take this together is 7%. the contributions to u.s. science, one of these papers -- and get into a discussion about exactly the observation of these papers but what is more interesting is these papers came to the same conclusion which is my currents make this contribution to science and engineering and more productive on average when looking at scientists and engineers. so in my own work, we have something quite similar but a bit more specific about students and we are asking the scientific output of chinese students

compared to students. so i am not going to get into that. we have 16,000 students graduating from u.s. universities in 1999 to 2008, 15% of which are chinese. and the national science foundation graduate fellowship program, this is a very prestigious award for a permanent resident who might wish to pursue graduating in u.s. universities. i apologize for the difficulty coming from the paper itself so we are looking at this and seeing how it compares to chinese students and other fellows or other students.

and what we find in that table, can be interpreted as personal differences. so the chinese students are about 25% or 30% operative and we just put the students together but then we compare students in the same program. then we compare students in the same lab with the same adviser. you may wonder, is 20% to 25% that big or small, that is why we have the numbers of fellows who and you can see the type of difference between the chinese student and the other students is the same order of magnitude as other fellows and students. the percentage of students doing mostly as well as their fellows,

at least we extend the same program. the interesting part is why is it the chinese students do well and the story is the following. in china there's a large demand but to a large extent cannot be met by chinese universities. so there is demand for gratification as applied to these programs. however, the chinese system and so forth, it is more difficult for chinese students to get in this program that is for an american student. the other part of the story is if you are in china, you need to have an undergraduate degree from one of the most prestigious

schools to get into the u.s. program. the passport you were in and extraordinarily selective. we can discuss this. but my calculation is the scores are at 30 times more difficult to get into peking university. . what we show is chinese migrants perform well in the united states. the graduate student is a work force of the modern advisory. the other saying the professor is only as good as the best student because the student is

learning the experiment or working the lab. so the access to high quality talented students allows university to put in more science. however a number of limitations to pursue the one is we don't know about the phd so we don't know -- we know about chinese students in the u.s. but we don't know if they will outperform other students. we know about the initial differences more than to continue over the life cycle of science and engineering. it could be chinese students may lack some of the skills which may be important. that is one limitation. one point i would like to emphasize that does not necessarily follow from the fact

the chinese students have a strong publication performance, that immigration of students is good for americans and there are number of possible counter arguments and the main one is that chinese may reduce incentives for americans to get into scientific areas by reducing wages. one point on this point is besides immigration policy that could be used for concerned in particular the amount of graduate fellowships could be increased to make scientific areas more attractive for talented americans. during this immigration policy. i have three more minutes. let me talk briefly about my paper on regional migration. we don't know much about

mobility choices and we can note to assert extend surveys but we don't really know what happens to them. go back to a preferred country. this paper looked at the faculty for grants in chemistry, chemical engineering departments. i am observing that if there is another 17 years, the other underlying population with that. i am following the carrier's and looking at wherever we go back. there is a striking percentage that only about 9% of foreign faculty in the country. ..

>> good morning. i'd like to thank david for inviting me, and darrell and brookings for hosting the session today. and you for having an interest in topic. what i'd like to do is present some ways of thinking about immigration, skilled immigration and policy responses. you know, it seems that a lot of our thinking about immigration generally but survey but skilled immigration as well is between the character buys it, these kind of polar opposites of we need more to generate unusual and unique products and jobs are we need fewer because they compete and they reduce opportunities for domestic students. i think by the end of this you will see it come out with somewhat of a third way of thinking about things. and i want to come to build a little bit on what you've been hearing here as well.

immigration policy has two important things that it accomplishes. want is to set the numbers. and the other is to control the quality. are we really getting the best and the brightest. the numbers think is fairly easy to understand, the pressures that set demand for more or preferably, a desire for a lower supply. but the other thing that is happening is globalization. globalization and really skyrocketing education in many countries is changing the nature of both the student marketplace and the possibilities we have for the best and the brightest. the word selectivity, that's country social science concept many of you are fully with. it's how you get the best and abroad. what forces and incentives create a demand for the best and brightest migrants to come to the united states. i've got 12 minutes so i'm going to skip some of this.

i have too many overheads. overheads are too busy. i welcome you to listen to what i'm saying and skip them a little bit. what i want to do here is set up, what i want to be discussing briefly in the next three slides, which is to have evidence of past storage -- shortage of stem, when you look at labor market type of outcome. what will the future bring. do we in fact admit to few? if you look at this slide, some of you have seen this. the reason you see the bulk of a lot of ph.d students from abroad in the u.s. population, at the age is because, in fact, we admitted a lot of skilled migrants in various kinds of s.t.e.m. feels as well during the latter 1990s. that was set in place by the 1990 act and say that.com moving. which really change the nature of demand and supply, both

policy and the labor market level. so, in fact, if you look at it is, arguably we certainly admit a lot of doctoral students but even master students have in the past and this shows up in the data. this is foreign students. what you see there is a post, if they did after 2001 but you also see a big dip after 1981. what's going on? the economy affects, the global economy affects student supply into the united states. i think the 9/11 effect was pretty minimal and i have data that suggest that wasn't the case. the numbers have again started to respond to the global economy. the info of students from china and india is down over 20%. india is down 20%. similar to what was after nine 9/11. it's the economy. what's unique about what's going on is this than 40% increase in chinese students in the last couple of years.

chinese students are coming to the unite states in record numbers and in such a large group that they're offsetting what would otherwise be pretty much across the board decline in student enrollment and the united states. think about this in terms of globalization and it comes like market share. we know the u.s. markets or fell from about 25 to 20% over the last decade their people say that's terrible. yet at the same time the number of students in the tiny increase by 100,000, about 20%. that's a phenomenal rate of increase. if as is the case was in a nonlinear growth of foreign students in source countries, for us to regain a third of the international student marketplace like it did 15 years ago we would be a nonlinear growth, upwards of u.s. institutions. can we absorb that many students? how would it change the nature of education? and what does it mean to the shortages and s.t.e.m.? if you look at this box down

here, and you can't like i want you, read all this up with any, change in i.t. and even natural sciences, the person who looks at this, mr. lemole says it's difficult to understand why industry with high level of demand generates so few wage gains. so where is the evidence of shortages? that i play another game. i took a projection, this is a few years old, of bls. the total number of computer scientists and engineers that the u.s. sees in 2017. that's the number employed. i can look at domestic rates of enrollment and just extrapolate them out into the future. this is what we produce on the domestic side. the residual is what we would supply with the foreign born students, foreign-born skilled migrants and we've seen increase

from 18 to 24% of their share of that particular occupational sector. here's the two things i want you to keep in mind. one of which is that an increasing share by almost a third in terms of foreign-born in these occupations. and here's the other thing that is interesting. at our current level of immigration, the numbers we admit annually will hit that. we were admitting enough for students and for skilled workers to meet that fairly sizable gain in four and share of the projected labor market. now let's talk about globalization, the issue of selectivity. i want to talk about a couple of different examples. so we are moving from numbers now to this issue of quality. noble lords are the cream of the crop. they are also a small numbers of people when they see this they dismiss the example because it's a small number. i agreed, but they are symptomatic of a phenomena i'm talking about.

the theory is when you have big barriers to migration, say as a chinese example, then what you do is you create an exotic -- and if i'm when you are highly selective of those who bear the cost and have the special qualities that make the move across international boundaries your so we know, for example, that the immigrants share of nobel prize winners has declined. that's the globalization thesis right there. globalization shrinks labor markets, lowers the cost and mobility, and, therefore, is less selective. we certainly see if you. you see it in another remarkable way, too. that is immigrants share of the ph.d labor market and s.t.e.m. has increased markedly, at the same time their share of the nobel prize winners has decreased. there's a decreasing selectivity in at least two ways you can see.

are there other ways in which you can see this? well, this is an ugly graph, i realize. it was better when i did it last night. what we've got here is three different fields, and the point is that this is the ration of educated with bachelors or but because this is what the data permits me to do. educated life and physical natural scientists, about 35% more likely to have a college education than natives. that's out here back in 1950. but the ration of educational advantage has been going down. the same thing with engineering, a little blip. and in life science, quite different, and that's destiny. remember, -- steven, information technology. information technology is a bit of an bird because a little under 10% of i.t. workers don't even have a high school degree among the domestic labor force. what does it mean to be more

educated in that context? earnings ratios, have gone down. again except for i.t. which is strange. basically over time what this is is what we call in social sciences be selectivity. globalization shrinks markets, decreases the selectivity and you see in terms of the relative education to the domestic labor force an entrance other relative earnings. you're going to hear from i think dr. height and others, and i think you've also heard year earlier there's a lot of good evidence that both workers and students are highly productive, or uniquely productive is the question. one thing you also hear about, is the rate of startups. and depending on the data you get, you can get somewhat different stories about the relative productivity of

immigrants. but when -- what i want to look every quickly is using his national data, simple data. what we can see is that at a national level in the united states, about 12% of s.t.e.m. workers, and information communication technology industries are self-employed. and a large share, a fairly remarkable should also, ceo business owners. in silicon valley which are probably can't see too well unless -- you know, quite a bit higher and very remarkable actually in silicon valley in terms of foreign, you know, basically directorship of corporations yet their labor share is higher. so where am i going? doing good. i want to return to the themes of numbers and quality.

numbers you can set in different ways. quality is also set by the marketplace, but it's also uniquely set by policy. there are three different kinds of philosophies i think, generally. one in three is the ones i open the presentation with. one is used that large numbers in the market will set itself regulate. make policy process painless. not simply to facilitate skilled migration or student migration, but to make a pretty painless. talk to anybody in the business h.r. department, hiring people is not painless. it's not clear that admitting migrants need be less painless, less painful than just doing good hiring. the 2006 bill that i mentioned here set in 26111 would increase skilled migration by fivefold with as close for each one of these but it would have set the

system pretty much the same. number increase in a way are argued to have an adverse effect on quality selection. on the bottom and, there's an argument that we have an oversupply of highly skilled workers. the third way, which is number two, what i suggest people also consider, which is balancing numbers in quality. thank you. [applause] >> okay, thank you lindsay. and, finally, we have darrell. >> thank you, mitch. what i would like to do is focus on the policy aspects of immigration consistently as it relates to higher education, very interesting papers on analysis that has been presented here. i want to start with some brief remarks on my immigration book, brain game, rethinking u.s. immigration policy. because what i do in that book

is argued that we need immigration reform in order to boost long-term economic development and productivity. it actually put a picture of albert einstein on the cover of the book just remind all of us about the many contributions immigrants admitted to american life over the years. we all know that intel was founded by a hungarian immigrant. google was cofounded by a russian émigre. yahoo! was established by someone born and i won and ebay started by someone from france. but with the american economy look like today if intel was a hungarian company? google was based in russia, yahoo! was a taiwanese company and ebay was french? i argue these are not isolated stories. studies have found many silicon valley companies had a foreign-born founders or cofounder. immigrants have made vital contributions to our economy. just this morning we've heard very interesting examples of the role of international students

in terms of productivity. we've seen in roberts paper just the rising number of foreign students over the last 20 years. patrick document the higher productivity. lindsay had some very interesting nuances to the store in terms of worker shortage is broken down by field. and we see some of the interesting contrast between the i.t. field versus some of the other areas. and then later on the second panel you will hear more from david about the role of immigrants and students in establishing startups. so i think that in a lot of respects there is evidence about the contributions that immigrants make, but yet when you look at our politics, our politicians are paralyzed by this subject. and it's kind of ironic that it's been difficult for our political leaders to address immigration, even though virtually everybody is like some

of the aspects of the status quo. i think some of the problem of immigration areas that people perceive the costs as being high while the benefits are no. in that situation no big surprise, the policy area becomes radioactive for politicians. it becomes hard to resolve. there's lots of emotion. there are many myths and false information surrounding that discussion. one of the reasons why we wanted to put on this forum today was to inject some facts into a very emotional and polarizing topic. and it's not like everybody is in agreement on what the facts are, but i think it is both interesting and important that there be some factual basis to these discussions so that we are not just making decisions based on opinions, ideology, or false beliefs. in my book i make a number of policy recommendations about various aspects, but i want to focus specifically on the

international student aspect because that's what this panel is really focused on. i found it very interesting in robert's paper that he found that 38% of doctoral students today are coming from abroad. but yet very few of these people i should have an opportunity to stay here. one of the suggestions i make in my book, and others have made the same suggestion, for example, mayor michael bloomberg has talked about this as well, it's automatic green cards for foreign graduates of american science and technology, ph.d programs. and when not talking about a large number because if you look at robert's paper, it's not a huge number that is required. but insurance of the quality, the possibilities for innovation and the opportunities for on to -- for entrepreneurship, i would argue the economic benefits are huge. certainly when you look at the

information technology field, the.com field and the cubbies have been started by immigrants or foreign students who came to united states to enter ph.d programs, there certainly are a number of examples where these individuals have made a dramatic improvement. now, we could trust the market come and there certainly are some policy mechanisms that are in place to match up the supply and demand in terms of the need we have for science, technology and engineering and math students. but we need to keep in mind that the job opportunities are starting to change. you know, he used to be we just needed math students for higher education, to train future mathematicians and so on, but in recent years we have seen the world of finance start to hard mathematicians. they are starting to take some of the people that used to go

into higher education, become college professors, the hedge fund companies, private equity firms, the risk assessment individuals are now starting to drain off some of these individuals. so i would be very interested in seeing lindsay's paper projecting into the future that when you start to see greater demand across a variety of different areas, not just traditional science or technology area for people with ph.d's in this area, is that mismatch going to become a larger? it going to become a national crisis? so for that reason i think we need to become more proactive as a nation. we do need to think about some of the policy actions designed to fulfill fields where there are likely to be shortages, and if you take the results of david's paper seriously, we think about the on -- the on governor aspects in the start of

aspects, you, these are the people are going to come and innovate, they're going to create jobs and build businesses. they will be major parts of the u.s. economy. so i just think we need to get more strategic in thinking about our need for high school workers and the role that international students play in that area. thank you. >> okay. well, thank you all. have i forgotten anybody? i don't think so. we have kept our time admirably. in fact, we are ahead of time so we will have lots of opportunity for q&a. i'd like to start if i might use the moderators prerogative. we, of course, have been hearing about immigrants and the contribution they make, but we also regularly hear anguished reports about the state, for state of s.t.e.m. education and the united states. actually, every country seems to moan about that.

and the implicit implication there is always not usually being discussed. it's just an assumption that we need more. we need more people in these fields, and yet lindsay, you're talking about, well, maybe there is a supply problem. we seem to have enough. we seem to have foreign students clamoring to come and. so how do you -- this is a big question, but how do you balance this immigration issue, this immigration policy debate with these calls for improving our domestic supply of scientists and engineers? >> am i on? there we go. thank you. i mean, this is not an easy nut to crack. on the domestic side, a colleague at rutgers certainly

suggests that the simplistic ways in which we think there's a lack of supply in the pipeline don't measure up. about a third of incoming freshmen over the last three decades have said i want to study in s.t.e.m. field. so there's no drop in interest. in terms of those who are capable, high school math scores in the united states are actually up. if you look at international tests we don't often do that well, then remember, there's maybe five, six, 7 million s.t.e.m. workers out of the labor force of over 150 million. so everything has a distribution, how many highly skilled people, how many in the top% -- top percentage. darrell brings up a more interesting issue. at its extreme it gets into an issue of science citizenry. and this is an old thing that's been around for a century or more. the idea that to really be at an adequate number of modern society you better understand

science. at the extreme it's hard to know how to deal with that. i think it's true, but how much science do you need to know? if you look at financial industry, a large share of s.t.e.m. workers and s.t.e.m. occupations, but a small sector overall so it's not citing everyone off. or another way to look at it, there's maybe 15 million people in the united states with a s.t.e.m. education, and maybe a third of that s.t.e.m. jobs. so close some of them are working outside of s.t.e.m. and is probably a good thing. how many more do you need? and that's a hard nut to crack. did that answer it? >> yes, sir. >> just one comment. i believe salzman also points out when compared to foreign students, u.s. citizens tend to leave the pipeline earlier, and the sense is that talented americans don't stick around to get their doctoral degrees.

greater tendency to enter the workforce. so at a certain point when you compare the foreign doctoral students with u.s. citizen doctoral students, you have to different in that, and i don't want to misquote or misreprese misrepresent, but he seems to suggest that the best and the brightest of americans tend to leave the pipeline earlier, where is the most talented of foreign students tend to stick around and get their doctorates. >> that's not right? please correct me. >> how and i did some work with about several longitudinal data sets and look at progression through the pipeline from high school and into college and into the labor force from the '70s through the 1990s. the early part of the last decade. and what we found is that the change or the rate of attrition at each level in the pipeline, high school, college, badgers,

badgers, a few years out, the race had changed much at all except for, interestingly, and we did really bridge out, in the 1990s there seems to be a dip in retention in s.t.e.m. jobs and s.t.e.m. higher degrees among the top quintile performers. and that's an odd outcome. we don't really know what's going on. so something good happened in the 1990s for the top performers. >> okay. i believe there are microphones coming around. yes, i believe your first and then the gentleman back there. >> thank you. i am picky. i may congressional correspondent from -- i read a lot about immigration have written a book on immigration and the american dream. being a journalist i have questions for each of you. so please bear with me, but

patrick, i wonder if you have studied about clustering in various universities that foreign students of certain come in certain geographic areas, certain parts of india would tend to cluster in one university around, say, a scholar from the university? lindsay, i wanted to ask you more about the wages tempting to reduce as the foreign student population, i haven't heard that 90% before. usually it's 70% to 90%, that's really huge. bill, i wanted to ask you -- darrell, i wanted to ask you about the numbers. as you were saying something like the foreign student numbers actually hit the peak of 600,000, hit over that peak a couple of years ago and now it's

close to 700,000. the majority of the students on foreign students visas, the majority are graduate students, the majority of those are in s.t.e.m. so we're probably talking to hundred 50,000 -- 250,000 people. if they're given automatic green cards i would think that is a significant number. so could you talk about the number? and then, you know, they are not all nobel laureates and they will not all start a google. so we're talking quality of 250,000 plus. it is retroactive we're talking maybe a million people. and i also like in the politics of course the whole of the politics, what i cover a lot is the low skilled workers. i think darrell you our talk at what point this is a zero-sum game if we're letting him, getting green cards to foreign students that will maybe at the expense of, say, extended family

visas. and i think there's a lot in the hispanic caucus, particularly who are against that. so for questions. >> patrick. >> so clustering of tiny students in southern universities and certain lands. so universities, nyu, 50% are chinese. if you look at labs, labs headed by chinese professor of about 40% chinese students, much higher. intriguing fact that should labs basically were extremely well. where you have one chinese professor and almost all suits are chinese.

>> again, s.t.e.m. immigrants are generally better educated than natives. their nominal earnings tend to be higher. the point i was trying to make is that if you use wages as a relative wages as another way of looking at selectivity, that earnings premium is decrease over the last half a century kind of thing. and a stiff the you might want to think about this. that was a simple point. that was a new set of slides i produce. i always like to do something new in my presentations. i was also doing some simple regressions, and it turns out that immigrants don't have differential earnings and s.t.e.m. feels. jennifer hunt is not a. that is a heavy caveat i, again, class of admission. so it gets back to policy. policy is a screening mechanism

and a class of admission, there's a big difference in earning outcomes for immigrants. policy matters. >> peggy had a couple of interesting questions just in terms of numbers. and if we kind of gave everybody, every foreign student had a ph.d and a s.t.e.m. field and automatic green card, would that just overrun the system. ..

landau's people and keep them here. the spirit of that proposal is designed to expand the field beyond what we have today because today we are at the opposite end of the spectrum where there are so few who have an opportunity to stay here unless they already have found a job and are able to qualify for a visa through their employer and on the zero some pretty train, it becomes zero sum game if we stick with the current number in terms of the visas either permanent or temporary that we provide. in that situation there is tension between the high skill and low skill area. if we ever reach the area where we increase those numbers is -- >> i want to throw these policy

issues out there because they are a bit tricky. there's something called a stable act and that you staple of green card into a graduate's degree and they can stay at that stage. and have the following issue with that. if you look at the australian experience where they gave land and status to graduate in created a decade of problems because it created the wrong incentive structure. a hope this doesn't surprise you. the students came to australia not to study. so the incentive structure you build is important. greater numbers will not necessarily yield greater results. you have to design the incentive structure right. lengthening that of pt for stem workers is the right way to go instead of the incentive structure for research and study which is what we want. >> the gentleman with the white beard back there.

please, just one question per person. >> my name is david north and 9 with a small think tank called immigration studies down the street from us. my question to this auld mail panel is why hasn't anybody mentioned the tension between male overseas ph.d. students and residents who are female. in the area with the percentage -- also the area in which there are more women percentagewise than in the other four fields. i wonder if you might speak to the gender issue. >> thank you for asking that

question. connie mcneill at george mason and a high of beginning a study of the gender issue ended is fascinating. what we would like to do is take a look at the demographics as the presentation i gave is broken down by gender and to see if there is any association to the richer nations that have larger or smaller representations in the male or female populations. the question i asked is is very large untapped population of talented women out there that are not being recruited to u.s. universities this. -- give me about a year and i will get back to you on that. >> we will start in the back. >> mark runs the, retired physicist. i want to ask about your data

about the entrepreneurship. you gave examples of intel and google. two types of immigrants involved in that. one that comes here to study and one that came here for political reasons. even with a visa, not necessarily to study but for political asylum and both of those examples, intel and google are the latter i would think. >> response? >> you have to look at your data. [inaudible] >> would anybody like to comment on that? >> in that case, back there.

>> i am jennifer miller. i'm doctoral candidate. this question is for david hart. you mentioned the intriguing counterfactual of we are a hungarian company and google are russian company, but do we know that that is the alternative outcome? are these success stories due to some of our other institutions around the u.s. and might that counterfactual be that we would have waited a few more years before those companies were founded and they would have been u.s. companies by those who grasped a similar idea. >> good question. counterfactuals are hard to test by definition but it is apparent the united states is facing

growing competition for on reportship especially in the pit area. the president of russia has talked about trying to create a russian silicon valley so they are very much devoted to training their students and keeping them in russia. we see the same phenomenon in a number of different asian countries. the worry i would have is if you look to the future with so many other countries seeing the power of information technology and life sciences, the link the tween those areas and economic prosperity and job creation, they are trying to keep those students home so they can get the benefits of those contributions. that would be the thing i would worry about. >> in that same road. >> my name is loren and i am

working on my master's at mason and all so immigration paralegal. so it is a great intersection of those two interests. i am curious if you think particularly for indian and chinese nationals if there's any evidence that just because of the visa regression in these two categories to stay in the pipeline and the extra productive with their scholarly work to stay in one category. >> could be part of the story. it would be difficult to distinguish these from students who come in to the united states or in other respects.

>> i am not sure it would apply to the student model too regularly. [inaudible] >> i have a question regarding a very small step that from patrick gaule's presentation that the higher presence of immigrants being interested in science and engineering, possibly that there were fewer americans interested in pursuing it to that level. what is the best incentive people seem to respond to? the wonder of science? is that why people continue to get their ph.d.s and stick around? is a catch? someone said that a decrease in wages could be reason people are

less interested. what is it we need to instill to get people here, interested in science to pursue it to the extent that is important? >> if you look at surveys of the immigrants they will tell you the reason they come to study in the united states is the quality of institutions but also the love of science. if you look at the data, what we find is economic incentives really matter to the flow of migrantss. there is a fascinating piece that looks at the availability of h1b slots. it had a positive impact. the story is there's a labor market motive as well. creating the right incentive structure the difficult thing to do. one thing that is clear is you can't simply jack up the supply

sight. you have to have that demand sight. if you don't stimulate the demand or fit the wage growth, you don't attract the domestic labor force. you probably in the long run don't have quality either. [inaudible] >> diane and intern and have a question about your mention about how many people i getting ph.d. degrees and going back to their countries. that is related to -- we create a system where they can stay in the states with their family, how much will they have? >> that is a very important question.

if we did the automatic green cards for graduates in the science and technology field how many would actually want to take advantage of that as opposed to going home? in the past, more would have availed themselves of the opportunity to stay here because of the opportunities but moving forward, this is where the united states is facing more competition. the home countries are making a major effort to bring the students back and the economic opportunities that are going to be available to the students especially those from asian countries is going to be huge. we have all seen the estimates that by 2015 china will have a larger economy than the united states and so when the individual student is making that decision did they stay in the united states or go home obviously there are a lot of factors that go into it in terms of family reasons. the situation in the home country as well as their

perceptions about economic opportunity. [inaudible] >> i have a question about demand and supply and how to measure these things. we are talking high skilled workers overall. how do we understand the demand for workers, how do we measure it and what do we know about the international selection of workers into those? it is a bigger question about our economy. we are going through a restructuring right now. but the window from the past? how do we understand demand at this point?

>> we don't. but we do look at certain -- we look at levels of unemployment which tends to be lower. we look at wage change which has been low and if demand for lawyers can increase wages 30% over 40% over a long period of time why is it not changing stem earnings at all? why do they lack? do we need that many lawyers? how many do you need? we don't know. but we do know one thing clearly in research which is supply will respond to wages. basically if lawyers put their money where their mouth is they will stimulate supply. in a simple way that is one way to look at it. more complex answer is the migration adviser committee in the u.k. is an interesting example. using multiple ways to determine

demand the standard critique i get to my presentation is what about petroleum engineering? it is a booming field. it doesn't really match up with what i'm talking about generally. to get at that fine level of detail which is what employers care about and the economy cares about and what darrell west cares about this mathematical latitudes, it takes a finely disciplined approach. my approach is not to over fine-tune things. >> starting with human migration. what aspect of this topic we are

talking about would be the most useful if for the u.s. public to discuss? thank you. >> that is a good question. so good that we're having difficulty answering it. i would answer by saying the problem i have with public discussions in the immigration area in general is how emotional it is and not linked to the fact. i often contrast discussions with social security. social security is seen as a radioactive issue. often described as a third rail. politicians can't really address it. the difference in the social security area is there tends to be agreement on basic facts. people argue over the

interpretation of the fact with policy ramifications and how we should address things and so on. the problem in the immigration area is not only are we arguing over things but we are arguing over the basic facts. will be tried to do this morning is provide some empirical evidence to address these things. what the public needs to understand is what the facts are of the situation. is not like there's always going to be a complete consensus on those facts but that is what distinguishs the immigration area from a lot of other areas and the reason it has been so difficult for the country to address. >> just for the general public, it is useful for just to say there's a lot of talented people in the world. united states or any other nation has used for those folks

what is the problem? if you see -- study some type of migratory movement the police student might get his doctoral degree in the united states from china or india and they have contacts in china and india. research shows their contacts in the u.s. and china or tie one is a win/win/situation. a taiwanese company might be started by a taiwanese doctor in silicon valley, jobs are created, maybe in texaco or taiwan and off shore somewhere else, mexico or whatever. the story that should be told is this is not a 0-sum game. when talented people go where there are jobs in the digital good things may happen and the

challenge for the researchers is to quantify that and make the case that this -- i am saying that. the challenge is to give evidence to show how this creates jobs and make lives better for the united states and other nations. >> what else? >> i hesitate to say this because it is not normal for somebody in education. i am not sure the public -- i used to think that was the case. consider this. gmf did an international survey and asked people what portion of the united states population is foreign born. they said one third. that is double the actual percentage. what proportion of foreign-born are undocumented illegal residents? they said half. they don't know what they're

talking about, right? the national press club, very interesting point, they may not be knowledgeable but maybe they are wise. a third of the u.s. population is foreign-born. would be mean by immigrant? and at least half of those who arrived in the last decade are unauthorized. the number of unauthorized migrants exceeded illegal migration for a good part of the last decade. how much more do we need to educate and in what way? what i would like the public to understand is there's a trade-off between numbers and quality and sitting incentive structure is a difficult thing. there maybe a few who will agree with me, congress should be less involved in doing these and to have more of a model like canada or australia where you have responsive dynamic bureaucratic control of these things with

congressional oversight so you get the incentive structure is correct. [inaudible] >> we have a system that mixes h h1b and eb. with any panelists like to talk about how this fits together and if there's an optical mix of the two? [inaudible] >> we need a lot of creative thinking. a provisional visa would do away with the system we have got. you automatically -- there are a lot of smarts to that. if we were to stay with the

current system the numbers exceed the final at the other end and if you do away with the per country cats you won't get away with that problem. numbers just don't watch. if you stay with the current system, i would say h1b needs to be smaller and more temporary. it would change radically to make it temporary. if we did that and may be expanded it would be a good idea in a much better situation. >> george mason university. the panel seems to imply there is a u.s. travel. we need immigrants to innovate, to be successful. a i really wonder if that is true. would you are implying is something really wrong we want fixed and we want to fix it with

immigration. i am not sure -- is immigration some bigger issue about american exceptional isn't that we sort of don't understand? an economic issue, i am not sure there's something really wrong. >> i would answer that by focusing on innovation. the president in his state of the union address talks about the importance of emigration -- innovation for long-term prosperity and job creation. i'm interested in the immigration angle because of the tie between immigration and innovation. i think there are links between the two at levels we talked about in terms of start ups, contributions to knowledge and so on. that is the crucial link. the united states has done a very well on innovation in the

past. the worry that i have is going forward are going to do as well and if we don't do as well, what is that going to mean for our economy over the next we 10, 20, 30 years? [inaudible] >> recently released congressional staffer. [laughter] in talking about the incentive structure a wonder if one of the problems is in the market trend to send productive capacity and high skilled jobs to other countries in recent decades. maybe compounded now by what we have seen in the last couple of years, marked lack of investment

particularly at home. companies sitting on a lot of cash. what message that sends to people about whether their skills are going to be applicable with places like ge and intel doing so much research abroad. the foreign students are already from somewhere else and they come here so presumably they're willing to go somewhere else or willing to go home. americans tend to believe we are the number one country on earth, so why would they want to go someplace else? what i am wondering about is in the absence and also went comes to innovation it seems for a number of years at least from what i have heard about in silicon valley if you have a startup plan and part of the work is not being done in asia you can't even get in to talk to

somebody so my question is in the absence of a clear future regarding either productive capacity in the united states or commitment to corporate research in the united states are going to have a great deal of success attracting young people who are american citizens into scientific careers? >> all i can say is before i came to brookings i taught at brown university and when you going to the ph.d. programs in many of the math, engineering and science fields the clear majority in some departments is a to two thirds or three quarters are foreign students. that is the crisis some people are perceiving about s.t.e.m. education, that american students are no longer going into those fields and if you

combine that with lack of opportunity for foreign students to get the degrees and stay here, that becomes a crisis. we can solve that problem in several different ways but if american students are not studying the s.t.e.m. fields and we are not providing opportunities for foreign students who are interested in s.t.e.m. areas to stay here that has the makings of a crisis. >> one thing darrell west and i agree on is the number of foreign graduates coming out of institutions isn't so large tipping one way or the other. is an important resource. most benefit the this believe we benefit from migrants and the system is running in mud so it should be fixed in some way so we don't have these bottlenecks that we have in so many different levels. if you had to simplify the question, can you resolve these

innovation issues by what he calls the american fear of being a diminished giant, can you address these innovation demands and fears by simply giving up the supply side and arguably no. you have got to have heavy investments in r&d. what triggered the sputnik moment was investments in military. would we go that way now. you need to work on the demand as well as supply which focuseds on will position altogether and the domestic pipeline will respond if appropriate incentives are there. >> i wish we had more time this is been a very lively and productive discussion. i want to thank you all and invite you back for the next session. [applause] >> we are going to take a couple minutes to get our next panel up here and we will proceed with

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>> we are bringing you live coverage of this discussion on immigration policies needed to attract highly skilled workers. it's hosted by the brookings institution. the second panel under way in just a moment is called highly skilled workers, technology and entrepreneurship. that should take us up to noon. we do expect this to get underway in just a moment. the senate will be in session this afternoon starting at two eastern. they will begin with morning business and will last about an hour and a 3-d will be more work on the faa authorization bill. senator reid hoping to finish work on this by february 14. the senate will continue an executive session to consider three judicial nominations. there will be votes on two of those and the votes will have it at 5:30 peaked. at 11:30 a.m. president obama will be speaking at the u.s.

chamber of commerce talking about u.s. competitiveness and job creation. live coverage again on c-span followed by your phone calls. also at 1:00 the white house press briefing with spokesperson robert gibbs. right now on c-span3 national security in the future of the u.s.-japan alliance. that started at 9:30 a.m. they're looking at climate change, cybersecurity and natural disasters. it's hosted by the u.s.-japan research institute. we expect that to continue and you can see that live on c-span3. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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>> we are a minute or two away from the second panel in this discussion on immigration policies needed to attract highly skilled workers. looking at what can be done to attract and retain a skilled immigrant workforce while maximizing the talents of nativeborn americans. they are discussing research finds an immigration's role in business innovation. is again taking place at the brookings institution here in washington. we expect the next panel in just a moment. this is live coverage on c-span2. >> okay, everybody. we're getting ready to introduce the second group of speakers.

very good. i'm kevin finneran. i'm the editor of issues upside to take note of the national academy of sciences, and i will be the moderator for the panel discussion for the second session. i will be introducing the speakers. and at this time the panel will be sitting down below so that -- and they'll all come up here at the end of the presentations start out with jeanne batalova who is a policy analyst with migration policy institute, and rather than wasting long time on background and so on we're just going to jump right in. >> good morning, everyone.

i'm jeanne batalova and i'm from the migration policy institute, an organization that deals in studies in depth various aspects of migration and immigrants, immigration. in the united states and other countries. and it's a great pleasure to be here to share the work that my colleagues have been involved in in the last few years. i'm going to talk about something that the first panel didn't touch on, and that is what happens to immigrants once they come to the united states, and they do have college education, and then they find themselves in the situation when their skills, knowledge, education is not utilized properly. a phenomenon called brain waste. you hear a lot about it today.

so how many of us run into an immigrant taxi driver who could run a complicated computer program with his eyes closed? are perhaps overt a medical interpreter who used to be a physician in her home country? are higher contract help who apparently has an engineering degree from abroad. how many skilled immigrants in this country who find themselves either unemployed or employed in jobs for which they are substantially overqualified? whose insurance should be with skilled immigrants in the united states instead of becoming google and yahoo! like entrepreneurs find that their skilled education and drives are underutilized in the labor market. what are the opportunities for the public and private actors to address such brain waste?

these other questions that i'd like you to floor with me today. in our efforts to quantify brain waste, we focus on college-educated immigrants, aged 24 and older who were either unemployed or employed in jobs that require no more than moderate on the job training. so of the examples would be construction labor, file clerks, cab drivers, nannies, parking lot attendants and so on and so forth. well, what we found was quite disturbing in our opinion. there are more than 1.5 million college-educated immigrants who were unemployed or working in unskilled jobs in 2009.

21% of college-educated immigrants, one in five, were working in non-skilled jobs and that's compared to 17% of the college educated u.s. workers. another 22% of immigrants were in what we call semi skilled jobs. jobs that require long-term on the job training, perhaps an associate degree, but less than college education that the immigrants have. and examples would be carpenters, electricians, massage therapists. we also found that -- well, the brain waste is the reality. that's our conclusion. but we also found is that the -- some groups of immigrants are more prone to face brain waste.

we found that 43% of recently arrived latin americans immigrants, recently arrived, those who came in last 10 years, and 30 -- 36% of those african foreign educated immigrants were working in unskilled jobs. longer residence in the united states typically is associated with improved outcomes. however, we found that nearly almost a bit more than a third of latin americans who have been here for at least 10 years we're still working in low and occupations. the next slide is an analysis come is based on our analysis of job quality of legal permanent residents. it's a survey.

the data from the national immigrant survey that was conducted in 2003, and, unfortunately, that's the latest data we have available. so here we look at green card holders and those who had obtained their degrees abroad, and were able to track the job policy from the job he left the united states, so their first job -- i'm sorry, their last job abroad, their first job in the u.s. in their current job. and i'd like to pay attention to three patterns. first of all, immigrants whose admission was based on employment visas, so little change in their job quality over time. for all other admission categories there was a decline following the immigration and

subsequent rise in job quality or the decline was deeper for those who came as refugees or diversity immigrants, the green card diversity long-term, therefore family immigrants. who often can count on relatives in assisting them in the immigration process. but also let's look at this versus new arrivals. the adjusters are immigrants who receive their green cards while they are in the united states. after spending typically sometime in the united states in a variety of temporary visas. and what's important is that status adjusters have better relative outcomes over time that their new arrival counterparts. in part owing great exposure and expense in u.s. labor market.

many highly skilled immigrants experience a sharp drop in occupational status when they arrive. what are the main risk factors? we found that lacking english skills was one of the biggest barriers. and letting it is such that we're not not talking only about english vocabulary or proper grammar, but the ability to communicate effectively in the work environment that many newcomers lack. having just a foreign degree, our analysis shows that those with the u.s. the degrees are three times more likely to be in skilled jobs. u.s. experience, u.s. employers want, demand and really rely,

rely on in their assessment, whom to hire. those who entered non-employment-based visas, those who, country of origin or region of origin matters. lacking u.s. professional and social networks is a huge barrier. but also institutional factors that absolutely have to be addressed. immigrants often face substantial difficulties in recognizing therefore an armed potential's and work experience. professional networks, mentors and learn how things are done in the field of study.

so, i have four more minutes. just real quickly about other institutional barriers that we found in our research that has been a can and again huge obstacles. lack of a state specific and occupation specific information about steps that are needed to pursue form of careers. gatekeepers, we have two major gatekeepers. professional associations that sets rules, state-by-state, that often with perception is instincts, as well as employers who often lack knowledge and cultural competence is in validating and hiring internationally trained professionals. shortage of quality programs available to newcomers that target work in language

training, as well as job search and interviewing skills. so, given what we heard in the previous session, we already know that highly skilled immigration is important for integration, competitiveness, creativity, academic and excellence, expansion of knowledge, so one is so forth. so i'm not going to talk about why brain waste is an important issue to address, even when the economic recovery is slow. instead, i'd like to share what we at npi think of a two-pronged approach in dealing with addressing with the brain way. it is immigrant immigration and policies with regard to admission. so, in terms of immigrant integration, the examples of other countries, and again, i'm a person who always looks at what are other people are doing

to get the best ideas. the examples of canada and australia show the importance of multi-stakeholder approach. so companies, employers can do a lot at their level by incorporating language training, for instance, in their in house communications skills training. states have huge, huge roles in making sure that brain wasting human capital are not wasted. i'm sorry, brain and human capital are not wasted. so states, for example, can partner up with other stakeholders and provide support for mentorship and internship programs, similar to what canadian federal and provincial governments already do on a large scale. they can provide occupation specific and guidelines that are

clear and up-to-date on how immigrants can have their for an earned a dangerous and work experiences recognized. they can spur the develop an effective bridge programs that serve both immigrants and employers. the very important spillover benefits to other groups of workers, for example, those returning from the armed forces, women returning to work or former inmates. at international level a lot can be done in terms of funding innovative and successful programs and information sharing. but we also talk about -- we also think about policies at the immigrant a mission. so what our image and provisional visas which will

redefine who's hired, wind is hired and what is a person, these people have after getting experience after both prospect of workers and employers test waters, and the provisional visas will give rights to work but also will give a person to sponsor themselves for permanent residency afterwards. and the last one, i know i have run out of time, is our idea of having to bring -- we absolutely need to bring facility into how immigration level and numbers and types of visas are set when the economy is changing like this and we're still in gridlock over undocumented immigration and nothing is moving. so having an independent commission on labor markets and immigration would allow us to

bring flexibility and transparency analysis, something along the lines that other countries already are doing. all right, thank you. [applause] >> okay. fortunately the next bigger concern outside the borders. -- the next speaker comes from outside the borders. >> thank you very much. i'm going to return to the topic of skilled immigrants and innovation, enough talk a bit about entrepreneurship as well in the context of the united states and i will begin some theoretical remarks before telling you some of the results of my own research. so how would we in fact expect

skilled immigration to increase innovation, and firstly, why do we care about innovation? because it increases productivity growth which is the driver of economic growth. and why would skilled immigrants help this? not the one thing i want you to think about is the one with my help us into by making the population bigger. if ideas can be spread across as a people as you like to know more people you have, the more ideas are likely to pop up, and the richer per capita a country will be. the thing we usually think about, on the other hand, is immigrants they themselves may be more innovative than the nativeborn. and alternative which is perhaps let's talk about is that even if they're not more innovative, perhaps they are better at some skill like entrepreneurship. now, why would skilled immigrants had the superior capacities? there are two options. one is that they have some

natural ability that's actually better, like some entrepreneurial spirit or talent. the other is that although not mutually exclusive is that the immigrants better educated or perhaps more specialized in relevant fields of study, how would these things in terms, about. one is while he called the self-selection mechanism. the source of people who want to come to the united states have these attributes. and again, not mutually exclusive, the other possibility is these are the people that the system let's come to the united states. so, is the analysis of the simple? i want to bring up a couple of theoretical points related to the importance or otherwise where skilled immigrants actually live. at first i want to think about the amount of innovation that's done in the whole world. so step back from the united states for a bit to think big picture. doesn't matter what the immigrants live are we just talk

about reshuffling where the innovation occurs? well, immigrants might actually be more innovative. their innovative capacity might be increased by moving to the u.s. or even if their innovative capacity is not, the capacity to commercialize innovation may be. these conditions ask to fulfill -- i can't cite you a lot of academic study showing that to be but i think we think that probably both these things are fulfilled, these conditions, so that most probably by bringing somebody very able to the u.s., if they're going to be able to realize their potential better. i can't actually prove that to you. now, let's actually think about a different issue. a lot of the discourse in the media and in politics seems to consider innovation to be some sort of sports competition where winning is what matters. if you come second it's just a disaster, and the better your

opponent is, the worse off you are. let's take the example of intel. darrell mentioned earlier, imagine if intel were in hungry. the discourse and the media politics is something that seems to say intel in hungry is like it would be no intel at all. odyssey that is wrong. perhaps a better outcome is intel in u.s. but if it intel is in hungary, it would benefit everyone. let's remember that and ask the question, doesn't make any difference. the answer is yes. academic studies that show that innovation done and the united states is more beneficial to the u.s. and innovation a broad, but just reminded innovation abroad is beneficial as well. it's just a question of which is more beneficial. so i think there's evidence that all these conditions i talk about is true that many people to the u.s. actually improves their capacity for innovation and commercialization, and that is somewhat better for the u.s. and having those people do their work abroad.

okay. let's just take about two other possibilities. so at the very beginning i was talking about how the immigrants themselves might be extremely capable. their contribution to the u.s. might be even bigger than individual productivity if they improve the performance of the nativeborn. so i work better when my colleagues are better, and so immigrants might actually improve the capacities of the nativeborn. now, on the other hand, immigrants might actually contribute less than you'd think by looking at their own productivity because perhaps as has been mentioned a few times, it would discourage the nativeborn from going into innovative fields. and here i'm going to actually present to you some evidence, of which is true. so i'm going to go out and talk about my own research, some of which is done with a colleague, a student at princeton.

one, we are really focusing on the individual immigrants, and their productivity compared to the native. what are we looking at? we look at patenting. i'm going to present the results to specifically of people commercializing patents. publishing greatly is another outcome we're going to look at how is it decided by an earlier speaker. i'm also going to look out the probability of founding a company that grows very fast at the beginning. that's going -- that part of the analysis does not take into account -- the second part does be the second part is narrower in scope that it only looks at patenting, but it looks at the effect of skilled immigration on patenting per capita. and it's going to include these spillover effects. the data i'm going to use for the first part of something of a

national survey of college graduates from 2003, and for the second part of going to be using many decades of census data and data from the use of trademark and patent office. so here's the first set of results. these are from individuals, and i'm going to start off by looking at wages, even though that isn't directly related to what we're talking about, but i'm starting off with wages because usually think of wages capturing that individuals, without any spillovers but overall productivity. i'm going to focus on the first column at first. what this number tells you is, remember the samples here, everyone has at least a college degree. this tells me the immigrants earn 2.9% more than natives. so crudely speaking because they 2.9% more productive. in the next line is looking at -- actually all the next questions refer to the preceding five years and the first question is whether you are

licensed or commercialize any patent, not that common among ages is .6% of people who have. and a moscow with this number says is amongst immigrants it is .7% more. in other words, is more than double in more than double is likely to commercialize or license a patent. the next measure i look at is whether you publish a lot of papers. i use the cutoff because of what the ditch vision looks like is more than six. 3.6% of natives had done so. and additional 3.1% of immigrants have done so. is almost double. then the final outcome is because of the nature of the data i can only work -- if you started from an last five years by the internet more than 10 workers, that's very fast growth. these usually unsuccessful companies, an additional point when he% of immigrants. so the capture is not as big.

now, what i do in the second column is i tried to look at what explains the superior performance, and i do that by comparing similar natives and immigrants. in my cellar what it really mean is here i'm comparing immigrants and natives with same level of education and the same field of study. and when you do that you find the immigrants aren't 8% less. this is a rather well-known resorts i won't linger on. it seems to be closer related to how old your own you arrive in u.s., and the eligibility. what's interesting is the result are different for the other more technology related outcomes. so you do, however, fully explain why the immigrants are better patenting by comparing people. to the tier -- the key thing is the study of highest degree. the immigrants are contrary and science in engineering and that explains why they are twice as likely to patent.

so you get a zero here. higher publishing rates, you still get an advantage of immigrants when you compare similar immigrants and natives, but it's one-tenth the size. so the reason for the superiority here, the double is likely to publish quickly is because of higher education and fields of study of highest degree where people publish more. and then started firms doesn't make any difference it has similar immigrants and native. in my view it's the first column that captures the actual conjugation of the immigrants to the u.s. but this one is used for understanding what it is. namely, higher education in the field of study, highest degree that allows that superiority. now i'm going to tell you briefly about the paper where i look at the impact of skilled immigration are patenting. just very quickly, this is from 1940-2000, what patents per

capita look like. there's a big increase in the '80s. this is what the sheriff immigrants -- this is what immigrants, this is immigrants in the share of college degree. what i find is indeed skilled immigration increases the patenting per capita. i give you some actual numbers. in the '90s patents per capita rose 63%. the share of immigrants amongst the college population grew from 2.2, 3.5% in that time. and there's a range of results depend exactly specify things, but that increase in immigrants come increase in patent per capita is between 12 and 21%. immigrants responsible between 16 and one-third of that increase in patenting per capita in the '90s. so to conclude, because of

higher education and different fields of study, field immigrants that more, publish more, start more companies than natives. and a raise patenting per capita if this is why just want to remind you that in this paper takes into account spillover effects. what i can do is to compare whether the impacts i find here is greater or less than you would expect from individual contribution of the immigrants. i find it's slightly more of which suggests that actually immigrants increasing the productivity of the natives, rather than discouraging. of course, there may be a few who are discouraged and more who are encouraged but the net effect seems to be increase the performance of the natives. and then finally you can do a back of the envelope calculation. the impact of these immigrants arrived in the 1990s on innovation, the effect of innovation on turn of gdp per capita. and you can work out because of the inflow that there was a college immigrants in the

1990s to the u.s., a gdp per capita was between 1.4, 2.4% higher in the '90s than it would otherwise have been. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. our next speaker will be ron hira. an associate professor of public policy at rochester institute of technology. >> i want to thank david and thank you for inviting me to present here, and i also want to thank the economic policy institute for helping to support some of this research. i'm going to talk about some policy issues come at the top of my talk is bridge to innovation. the visas are a source of both

cheap and temporary labor as well as permanent immigration. so let me hit a key point here. first, h1b and l1 visas are temporary work visas. they are not the same thing as a green cards or legal permanent residents. we heard a bit about the green card discussion this morning, some terminology that some of you might know the become employment base, this different categories of green cards and getting green cards through employment-based. having said that, h1b and l1 visas are temporary but they're also do intend. what that means is employers have the option of applying for legal permanent residents for those workers. those workers can't sell petition. of course, they can try to go to the diversity lottery or go through some other means but from an employment base means they generally do not have that ability. and in this paper what i wish is that some employers in fact

using h1b and l1 visas as a bridge to permanent immigration as a bridge to the green card while others are using simply for labor mobility. this is part of what's happened over the last decade in terms of globalization and all short and i will tie those together. and this is important from a policy perspective because we often a lease in the public discussion conflate the two, then h1b is the same thing as green card come and our policy levers don't distinguish between the two come between a temperate work visa and legal permit residents. the h1b and l1 visas also account for a lot of workers, about a million or so workers. we don't know how many at this is one of the problems in the discussion also is dhs, the government really isn't collecting data and it doesn't know exactly what's going on with these visa holders. i would also talk about some loopholes that make the visa attractive for cheaper labor. and also tie in out these loopholes are queuing offshore and.

what you see top employers are offshore outsourcing. so let me go through very quickly some of the gaping loopholes that we have in the program. there's really for that i would identify as the most important. one big myth is that the labor market -- there is no labor market test for h1b or l1 visa to employers do not have to look for american workers before hiring h. one or innovate they can replace american workers with h1b and l1 visas and this just isn't a theoretical thing. it's been reported in various press accounts that major companies like pfizer, wachovia when it was taking t.a.r.p. money, ibm and siemens have had enforced the american workers to train foreign born replacement. the upshot is there's no shortage necessary here. to bring in these workers. they could also legally pay market wages and we know there's a right at different ways, but

the most obviously is a tax on employers of h1b workers have told the gao yes, we hire h1b sometimes because they will take a lower, less than market wages. and affected gao found that 54% are paid skill level one wages. these are super high wages. these are the 17% tiles for those particular occupations in those locations. i lot of them are being brought in and essentially entry-level wages. another problem with the program, both programs is employers hold the visa and control for legal permanent residents opportunities. so as i said, the workers can't sell petition and because of the nature and we talked about this earlier today, about the small number of green cards that are their relative to the large number of h-1b and an uncapped l1, that creates a very imbalanced relationship and you've got a large number of people who are on the temporary work visas that are waiting a

long green card queues. and they're stuck not like that employment even within that job. has been very little government oversight. the system integrity mostly depends on whistleblwhistleblowers come and that's not the best way to run things. particularly if a temporary worker is terminated and they have to leave the country right away. so it really discourages them from going through that. so let me get into some data here are this is the top h-1b employers, and what i've done is added at the top employers for fy '07, fy08, fy09 date and the upshot is seven of the 10 top employers are actually have significant off shoring. this is kind of the who's who of the offshore industry. mosey base in india and this is. so for going to talk or the beneficiaries of the h-1b

program, one has to say that the offshore outsourcing industry has been a huge beneficiary. seven of the top 10 employers beneficiaries of h-1b are off shoring firms. and that what i've done is looked at to what extent these serve as a conduit to permanent immigration. so to what extent do of h-1b's and l-1 serve as a bridge to immigration? i'm just going to show you one chart here in the interest of time. and what i've done is taken the top 10 employers and i've reshuffled them a little bit based on what i call to immigration yield. what i've done is look at the green card applications that each of these employers have filed on behalf of other h-1b workers over the three-year period, and divided by the number of h-1b's. what i get is an immigration yield so just to clarify your, top consultants applied for zero green card but received 2368 h-1b's. that would be a 0% yield.

whereas if you look at microsoft they apply for that 67% of the number of h-1b's pickup. this isn't a perfect measure but issuing indication of how these employers are using these programs in various different ways to have a had a more nuanced discussion i think about thinking about policy and policy levers and criteria that we use when we look at the impacts of these types of programs. if the goals are really to bring the best and brightest and keep them here they we need to look at this kind of data, think about how we disaggregate some of the uses of the project is being used. you can save there is some clutching her at the top. companies that might surprise you like pfizer, very, very few green card applications were as they're getting quite a few h-1b's. ibm similarly. and part of what is going on there is they're getting pressure basically to adopt the

outdoor business model. i will show you another to explain this. you have u.s. countries have essentially been pushed in the direction of adopting same model with an emphasis. so this chart here is from 2005, and the reason i pulled this out is this is kind of a tipping point for the i.t. services offshore outsourcing business where it really took off. and what this shows, and i would just point out, i've got four of the top i.t. services companies, to to base in india, to based in the u.s., and i will focus on emphasis the top india one and dts what was the top u.s. want him to was bought out by hewlett-packard. what you see here is the pressure from wall street. market cap is the market cap position. this difficult -- total by of the company has priced out of its stock price and multiply by the outstanding number of shares

if you want to take it private would have to come up with $20 million. if we want to take like eds private would cost about 12.5 billion. so why was it is as priced so much higher by the market even though it had much lower sales about a 20th of the sales? the reason is simple because their profit margins were much higher. the reason their profit margins were much higher is partly because they're doing the work offshore but also because they had changes by bringing it on site labor at lower costs on h-1bs and l-1 visas. government policy tilted the field in favor of that kind of business model. and to give you some sense of companies like infosys doesn't have many americans that they have a very small share. here i pull out a quote from cis, the officer of wipro. how to use the h-1b program. they bring about 1000 temporary

workers to the u.s. each year while 1000 rotate back to india to serve clients. so what does it serves as the training ground where you bring in workers to learn the jobs and then move them overseas. these policies also disadvantaged countries are hiring american workers were trying to hire american workers. this quote is from an interesting guide here who's the ceo of systems in motion which is a u.s. world source-based company trying to hire america's. but he's kind of interesting because he's asked a former executive at one of the offshore outsourcing companies, and his quote is the widespread use of current work visa laws be be one, h-1b our l-1 programs that allow countries to bring in cheap labor from other countries to replace an american labor pool is extremely damaging to our business because it creates artificial pressure on prices and consequently wages of an equally qualified local workforce.

so you've got someone who knows the system inside and out because he's been an executive in one of those companies, and how it's harming now his business as he tried to hire american workers. and you do this also from trade groups like the national association of computer consulting businesses, now known as tex or allies when they testified before congress about the l-1 and the opportunities there. in the case of the l-1 visa there's no way to lewis with his huge wage arbitrage would they testified the fact their clients or their companies were being undercut by 30 or 40% in terms of their billing rates. so let me conclude with some discussion on policy reform, and i'm sure we'll talk about this in a lot more detail during the q&a. but it seems to me that it's pretty clear that current system is harming american workers, students and companies as well as foreign workers as they become tethered to not just an employer, but to a specific job

waiting for six, eight or 10 years for their permanent residence. and i think it's right for income at u.s. s.t.e.m. workers to question these kind of government policies, whether they're being undercut or not. and that's important for a few reasons, not because it hurts them. you can say helps the public welfare and maybe at their expense, but if s.t.e.m. really does matter and you think that you want to encourage fewest domestic supply into s.t.e.m. these are the best ambassadors to the next generation, it's the income of workers who will go out of work with young people to say these are great careers, great professions, you should come into. so in terms of my recommendations, i would say we should close these loopholes which i don't think should be controversial. one is we should intimate effective labor market test. you should look for american workers. there should be some need there. those foreign workers should be paid market wages at least. and you should increase the

portability pieces and have a clear and rapid path to permit residents. and that we should have conduct regular audits of these programs. we need a lot more sunshine of these programs, particularly the l-1 visas. we are very little data and very little information on what's going on, particularly in terms of wages. you can hire a typical i.t. worker or engineer in india for $7000 a year. so you can imagine that kind of wage arbitrage we have no wage floor at all. so we don't know what's going on there. secretary of labor ray marshall has recommended foreign worker adjustment commission. i know migration policy institute has worked on these things. and i believe it was the last one and just say that i don't think that trade policy should circumvent integration policy. one aspect that hasn't been discussed enough is the intersection of trade and immigration policy. trade agreements are increasingly having these kinds of immigration type of provisions in them as low-cost countries what to see -- want to

see a barrier to trade, that their advantage as low-cost high skilled workers, and a barrier to trade is moving their workers into a high-cost countries. thank you. [applause] >> all right. and our final speaker is the person is most responsible for bringing this entire session together, and that is david hart from george mason university. >> thank you, kevin. and thank you all for staying. it's been a long morning, and i know we have some discussion to go, and i look forward to go to that. so my work is on a relatively small but important slice of the subject, i want to acknowledge my co-author who is here. i put his name in parentheses only because he shouldn't be

associate with anything it might say in the qa, especially he can speak for himself i'm sure if he disagrees with me on any of the points. this work builds on dollars of prior work, and we are focusing on a particular important population of firms. these are firms that have doubled in size in a four year period. and his early works such as these terms are responsible basically for all of the economic growth in the economy. and employment growth as well. they are are an interesting group of firms. they need to be studied more. they are not all startups but most of them are pretty yelling. and they are not all in the high-tech sector. they are very broadly across sectors. but there some reason to think of high-tech firms are more important than other firms. so in our study we focus particularly on these high impact, high tech firms which the idea that perhaps this is a point of leverage for accelerating economic growth. i should reference this paper

that trade to mention the beginning of the talk. we talk. we have a policy briefing that we are releasing today from brookings and that's related to broader peer reviewed work in academic literature. so i will do to the and you may want to look up some of the more fine details in that paper, or any published work. okay, so we did a survey of these companies, and they were about 25,000 firms in our population. these are the high-tech firms that have doubled in the for your very from 2002-2006. we basically called him up and asked them a series of questions, and we had about 1300 responses. the reason we kept it short is that's the way you get a reasonably high survey response rate. of course, the disadvantages we only know a little bit about these countries. there's a lot more detailed questions we would like to know but we don't know the answers. we did follow-up interviews with a small group and that shed some quality of light on it but it's difficult to draw final

conclusions from that small set of case studies. but they are contradictory. our basic fun is that about a six of these firms had at least one foreign-born founder. and i was cackling from jeanne is never come if we extrapolate outcome with other studies in this field, borders on the high end or low in. this difference -- different ways of defining the population. but my you and i think zoltan did you come if you look at it is a sizable share of these coveted many of the cubbies are found by more than one person so when we look at the population of founders rather than the population of copies, the number goes down about 13% of the founders of these companies were foreign-born. and then so you notice i'm shifting back and forth between language foreign-born an immigrant, and i want to clarify that. so someone in the u.s. law,

can't commend to the getty drinker. i think it's justified use that term here is that most of the founders have been a longtime. most of them are naturalized citizens. many of them are highly educated, and these characteristics are not surprising because we are only looking at companies where they been successful. they have doubled inside any four-year period, and, in fact, in our case studies we found a surprising proportion that they have founded previous country. -- previously companies. so this is a kind of profile of the founders. i think the thing that strikes people most when you look at our paper, the thing i've got mostly back on is what these people come from. they come from all over the place. in the back of the paper you can find a table of 55 different countries that are represented in this population. here's a little bit of detail on education. we know these foreign-born founders, here are the foreign

born founders are immigrant founders. the light bar are the nativeborn. they are far more likely to have a higher education, have a graduate education. and i think that's because as jeanne said, it's a gateway for highly skilled people to come to the u.s. and also there are opportunities for people to start high-tech firms before they get to graduate schools. so bill gates and paul allen being very famous examples, college dropout who started microsoft. now, the real difficult question here is are these folks complementary to nativeborn or is there some kind of crowding out? unfortunately, and i think all of us in the field feel this is unfortunate, there's no definitive answer to this question. to the founders make the firms are in a sense does the environment make the firm? we get a little bit of leverage

on that by comparing those firms that have at least one foreign-born founder with those that were native founded. what we find is that they are very similar, and less we take out -- this is if we control for education. if we take education out, the foreign-born firms perform better. of firms founded by foreign-born founders are far better. this is a question of interpretation, again to what extent is a success due to their individual characteristic, again as jeanne alluded to, or does it have to do with the environment in which these terms are being founded. and the nativeborn person had the same education would have found a similar kind of firm. one difference that we give it is a we asked the question, does your firm have a strategic relationship with a firm in a foreign country? and we give it a difference between the firms that have at least one foreign-born founder and those who only found by nativeborn. again, question of

interpretation, is this a vehicle for outsourcing jobs that otherwise would've state in the united states, or you is this a business strategy that is essential to the firm's survival? a question, i don't think we have a definitive answer to but is it's interesting to think about. another finding that i'm not going to talk about a lot but that struck us as we look at the data was at the foreign-born founders were more likely to team up with people who might be considered outsiders in u.s. complex. that is u.s. minorities and women. compared to their white nativeborn counterparts. so that's an interesting funny. there's not a lot of these firms i think you have to be very, very careful in doing much with that it, but it's an interesting proposition for future research. so the bottom line, this is going to more detail in the paper, i don't think we can rule out the crowding out hypothesis. if you put that finding and what do you what do you fight in conjunction with the work of jeanne and others, our inclination is to view the these

foreign-born than as confident he to the nativeborn founders. but i would actually admit that there is some interpretation and extrapolation required to get to the policy implications. okay, so let me turn now in the last piece of the talk to the policy issues. the first thing i want to say is we need to embed this in a broader set of things in that we're talking about long-term policy, that a kind of help from the recession that is going on right now. and the idea is that maybe we can expand that big population of high impact firms, and that that might help the economy. can we do that? i don't know. i think the administration is starting to engage an experiment that would try to answer that question. and i hope that they will move that forward. ..

>> that deals with all aspects of the environment for high impact and high-tech companies, i think that bringing, having immigrants who have these characteristics is probably a positive contribution. and that's, obviously, something we're going to discuss now on panel. so how would you do that? not so new ideas as identify gotten into -- i've gotten into the immigration field. there are no new ideas in the immigration policy as far as i can tell. every idea has been thought of, debated, recycled. people said it's paralyzed, it's been paralyzed a long time.

my not so new ideas, there are three of them. my first one and the one that has the most leverage s to just try to deal with the backlog of those who are here already waiting for their green cards. there is a paper that suggests about half a million people not counting families, but half a million people just waiting in many line for their green card and doing, you know, various things that it takes to extend their stay in the u.s. most of these people are from a small number of countries, india and china. some of the categories were alluded to earlier. eb-2, that is employment-based second category includes professionals with advanced degrees, so if you're from india and you have an advanced degree, the immigration system is basically processing people from the middle of 2006. so about a five-year, four and a half year backlog for that. eb-3 professionals with bachelor's degrees or skilled workers, so that's a much broader group. there if you're from india and

you applied for a green card in february of '02, you're now at the top level of the priority list. so we're talking six, eight, ten years for many people. this is just accommodating these people, they're here, they're working, let's free them up from being tied to their employer. so that's idea number one. second idea, i think, again, some of the previous speakers have mentioned something like this is to try to address the immigration pathway for students. students have to figure out how to get employed. there is a pathway for them to get employed through so-called opt, optional practical training, so it's possible for students to stay and look for a job. but when that period expires, they have to have an employer who's ready to sponsor them, and that may be difficult. and then, obviously, they have to get through the green card process like everybody else. so, so i'm in favor of trying to link these statuses together, but i think it's important to build in the employment piece as well as the student piece as

opposed to those who would say we should staple the green card to the diploma as a representative of higher education, i can tell you there's a lot of creativity in higher education, and there would be universities that would recruit on the basis of attractiveness to the green card as opposed to other kinds of things that you might want to recruit students for. so i think there's some need to temper that idea with an employment element. and then the third one, and this one i think is much more difficult to implement, but it hasn't been mentioned today, so i'm glad i have it on my list. it's the idea of employing a point system. the immigration system would pick people on educational qualifications, language qualifications and so on, and this is in place in a number of countries, australia and canada most prominently, and it was contemplated in the 2010 bill. -- 2007 bill. for picking high-impact entrepreneurs, i think that's a much more difficult problem. we're talking about a tiny fraction of the population, and

it's difficult to observe those qualities like risk taking, like some kind of outlook on seeking opportunities that you might want to identify these people. so i think that's difficult to do, but it would be worth talking about and thinking about it. so to wrap up, my time is over. i don't want to exaggerate the importance of high-tech entrepreneurs. it's a very small slice of this population, but i think it is a consideration that would be worth thinking about as we debate this broader question of competitiveness, innovation and high-skill immigration. and, again, thanks for coming. i'm looking forward to the discussion. [applause]

>> excuse me, i'm going to ask a couple of questions. i need to focus the discussion a little bit. one of the things i realized in listening to the presentation is that we're confronting layers upon layers of questions. i mean, for 25 years i've been worrying about the fundamental question about how can we even provide evidence that investments in research and development lead to innovation, that innovation leads to growth in the economy and the growth in the economy is benefiting the country largely. and, in fact, i've had no success in answering that question satisfactorily. so we have lots of questions, we have to look at where innovation comes from. although people in the science and technology community hate o talk about it, it's possible that the reason the united states is so innovative is not because we have great scientists and engineers, but that we have great financial managers on wall

street who can provide the capital where it's needed, where it's needed or that we have terrific lawyers who are able to negotiate contracts, property rights and so on that make it possible for these great ideas to become profitable businesses. we're not going to try to resolve all of those questions. but we have a tremendous amount of information here, and i'm going to try to focus a couple of questions on where we have data and where we've raised specific questions that i think we might be able to help answer. so i was going to start with if we can even agree that it's a good thing to have highly-skilled immigrants come into the united states, can we say that without also deciding how it is we allow them to come in? so, for instance, we talked about many be of them come here, they're well educated, but they can't get the right degrees. so i was going to ask jean when

she was listening to ron's talk about the way many people, the system they have to work through in order to find jobs, how big a problem is that? how much of the problem that you see of people not being able to find adequate jobs with the training they have, how much of that is caused by the way that we regulate particularly the temporary work visas? >> um, by the way, i found all the presentations very insightful, and i do agree with a number of, with the loopholes that ron described and how they contribute to this mismatch in opportunities that domestic and foreign workers have. but in our work on brain waste,

we found that the people who are affected the most are not so much those who come through temporary and employment-based routes, but rather those who come through family reunification or under humanitarian protection. on the other hand, those who do come through h-1b, l-1, f-1 student visas, their employment opportunities are usually substantially better. >> um, also i think a related -- sorry. a follow-up question is, um, when you look at the differences the sort of brain waste as you call it, um, do we know how come this is in other countries? is the united states particularly bad at wasting the skills of its population? >> um, well, um, canada and australia have done tremendous amount of, um, research on the

issue, and they were, in fact, the pioneers in this field identifying that it is a problem. both countries have points-based system, and they, the government actively selects who's supposed to come based on their human capital. yet they've found that immigrants who arrive, they can't find jobs, and their outcomes are rather poor. so both countries have done work and not only identified the extent of brain waste, but also quantified it and found that the there are substantial economic costs at the national and provincial levels. so we are some in the beginning in doing this work, and we tried to quantify it for the first time in the united states. but in canada and australia, it's been recognized as a policy

issue of national priority and substantial resources, investments and coordination of many stakeholders has been done to address this. >> okay. ron, i wanted to ask you, you complained a lot about the way particularly -- [inaudible] treat their workers. just to give us a little more concrete understanding, what exactly is the nature of their business, and also, when we're thinking about the larger effect of having skilled workers, how do companies like this, um, how do you understand them in terms of what they do for the overall economic benefit for the states and for global productivity? >> sure. just to clarify, i think from their perspective, probably from the workers' perspective that the emphasis that they feel like they're being treated well because their opportunities are actually better than the alternative which would be working abroad. in fact, i have cowz sips who

are much happier working for these large firms. -- cowz sips who are much happier working for these large firms. so that's one aspect. they're choosing those positions. and i think this then raises a larger aspect of how does this impact not only the u.s. companies who are benefiting by getting lower-cost services, generally these companies work in i. t. services, and you'll have the u.s. multi-nationals who are very happy to get those lower costs and, in fact, advocate on behalf of the more liberalized h-1b visa programs including putting them in trade agreements. now, the question is how does that effect american workers who are competing? we could, as some economists do, believe that everybody who comes in is complimentary no matter what their wages and working conditions are, but i don't think that that's the case. i think it does have an impact in a couple of different ways,

one in terms of affecting americans' wages and working conditions, putting pressure on there, but also in speeding up offshoring. i showed you the types of profit margins that these companies have. they're really transferring knowledge and capabilities overseas. um, and what they're doing is they're creating competitive landscape where an ibm, an accenture, the major u.s. companies are adopting that offshoring model much faster than they normally would have without those kinds of policies. and so we hear from the economist magazine that ibm has more workers in india than the u.s., act schoenture has had over 50,000 workers in india,less than 35,000 here in the u.s., and we wonder about job creation in the u.s. it's not just entrepreneurs that matter, it does matter that you have that human capital employed even in large companies here, that next generation of entrepreneurs also comes out of those large companies, and we

can look at history, you know, eds, ross perot was the ibm salesman, cisco, john chambers was an ibm salesman and so on and so forth. so i think there's lots of -- we need a more nuanced discussion about those impacts. it's good for some of these u.s. companies. is it good for the country? i mean, this goes back to the bob rush. >> jennifer, since you've tried to identify, how do we look at benefits? how do we see how this effects the larger economic forces? is there any way to sort of ferret out the differences, the types of innovations, the types of changes we are seeing, we are using this talent and determining what the overall benefits are? >> that's a good question, but a hard question, and it does tie to a few things that i did want to say and that you, actually, brought up in your initial remarks. when i began the paper, for example, to look at the effect

of skilled immigrants on patenting, why did i actually pick pat patenting? because it's measurable, not necessarily because i thought it was the biggest contribution of immigrants. but if you want to look at the contribution of immigrants to the finance industry, for example, to the management consulting industry you can't really measure it. and so we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that science and engineering are not the only places that people in general and immigrants in particular can contribute to productivity growth in the u.s., but it is a little bit easier to measure than contributions in other areas. in terms of the benefits, let me talk about what ron was just talking about. of there's something here a little bit strange about the literature that talks about offshoring. let's think about the literature in trading goods. of course, when you're looking at the effect of trade, you look at both imports and exports when you're thinking about good. and if you're thinking about

trading services, one would imagine one would do the same thing, but importing services, that's what offshoring is. and exporting services is onshoring. and yet i don't think i've ever seen a paper about onshoring to the u.s. except about three papers that show that the value of onshoring to the u.s. is about equal to the value of offshoring. so it makes a little sense to study only offshoring as it does to studying only import of goods. you have to look at the other side as well. so you can't say just as offshoring's bad, the idea that somehow the u.s. would never offshore anything but would continue to onshore in equal value? there's really no policy you can make that improves everyone's well being. there's always going to be winners and losers. so be you think of trade and services, one assumes -- but i've never seen a study -- that the onshoring is the jobs of higher skill levels than the ones that are offshored, so presumably this whole process

does increase in equality, but there's certainly no reason to think that decreases employment. >> okay. [inaudible conversations] >> can i get to just that? >> thirty seconds, all right. >> yeah. as a number of blue ribbon panels, tim sturgeon's group at mit, we don't measure services particularly when it comes to trade very well. in fact, there's huge data gaps. there isn't a way to talk about onshoring, offshoring in terms of the trade data itself and services. >> okay. and finally with david, i just wanted to get just a look. when you look at the backlog of people applying for green cards and the growing stream of foreign-born people coming out of our institutions of higher learning, what does the picture look like for them? what happens if we don't do anything about this? i mean, where, where does this go? >> well, i think the evidence is that we just continue to muddle through. what we have is an imbalance between people who come

nominally for temporary purposes, but in practice the culture is that you find a way o work your way through the system. i think the answer is we have a lot of people in limb poe, and we don't -- limbo. ron mentioned that the h-1b is dual intent which means that it could be temporary, it could be permanent, but, of course, there aren't permanent places for everybody. so the intent is a little bit fuzzy there, i hi it's fair to say -- i think it's fair to say. i think we ought to remember there are people involved here, and it's not just about the economy as a whole, but also about these people. and i think the biggest impact the that they're stuck, those who would like to stay but are unable to. and, also, people go home, and i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. in fact, it's one of the good things about u.s. policy over the 50 or 60 years that it's been in place. bob hamilton mentioned the possibility of a positive-sum game. the goal isn't just to accumulate and accumulate and

accumulate. there needs to be some balance. but i think we have a -- the policy now, it brings people in without giving clear signals as to what the disposition is going to be in the long run, and i would like to see that sorted out. >> all right. now, let's turn to the audience. a question over here. >> i have the same question for -- [inaudible] about the data. as we look at -- have you looked at asylum immigration versus the kind of immigrants you addressed in your policy recommendations? my take on your data is that a large fraction of those entrepreneurs were asylum immigrants. >> yeah. we don't have the data for our study on that because we didn't necessarily talk to the entrepreneur themselves in doing the survey, we talked to the company. and we felt it wasn't necessarily realistic to ask the respondent to know what kind of visa the person came in on. but it's pretty clear people are

coming as students or as workers. i think there may be some individual cases of the sort that you're talking about, but my own gut instinct is it's a pretty small share, and i think john's data backs that up a bit. now, the early cold war period may be a different story than the 1990s. >> right here. >> my question is for professor hart? thank you. i found your study very interesting, but i was wondering if you only did this for the u.s. case, would replicating this, say, for the community of ec what dorians in spain, would they publish more, patent more? have you explored maybe studying that as well? >> well, in the study i was focusing on people with a college degree or more, so i'm deliberately honing in on the skilled component of immigration to the u.s. things would look different if i just looked at all immigrants against all natives because the immigrants to the u.s. are concentrated in the northern college section and the less

than -- more than college section and the less than high school section. and if you're looking at outcomes, they would cancel out. and so in spain, for example, the -- because it's very difficult unless you're from the european union to move to spain legally, for example, the ecudorians mostly go illegally to spain and wait for am amnesty. so the people who are willing to work illegally for a while and wait for amnesty, they're not likely to be so skilled. but there was actually a reason i looked to the u.s. for the study though. it's precisely because i think that the u.s. probably does have the best environment for innovation in the end, and the u.s. has been a leader in innovation, and that's why i was interested particularly in immigration to the u.s. and innovation in the u.s. i think it would be more interesting to take a country like, say, canada and try and look at the outcomes there.

if you're looking to alternative to the u.s. but i think it's inherently not quite as interesting because canada's not the leader in innovation, but i also don't know any data that would allow you to do that for canada, so i haven't actually looked at other countries. >> the back of the room, please. >> good morning. this is jean lee from judge mason. i have a question for jennifer. actually, i enjoyed your presentation very much, but i'm wondering if foreign-born and native-born, are they truly comparative since even if they're concern in your research you say they're from the same field and they're absent level of education. but since the high-skilled immigrants, they are far away from the average in their home country. so my question is in terms of product it. should we compare the

high-skilled immigrants to the native-born, or shall we compare them to their counterparts there in their home country? thank you very much, indeed. >> well, that depends on what the question is that you want to ask. i think if you want to and what this im-- ask what the impact is on the u.s., if you're interested in be what's happening to the home country, of course, then you want to compare to the home country. and if you're interested in the world as a whole, you might want to know both, i think. but you're right that an issue when we say we're comparing similar immigrants with similar natives is whether the observable characteristics really are comparable. so just, for example, many data states we don't know where the person has studied, and we say, all right, this is a college graduate from ec ecuador, and ts was a college graduate from the u.s., and we say, therefore, they have similar education. but we don't really know how well it transfers. in the data i used, you actually do know exactly where the people

studied, and i find, for example, that people who studied outside the u.s. in terms of wages get a 20% lower return. but what was very interesting, though, is it doesn't make any difference for all those other things i talked about, all the innovation and so forth. that very much surprised me. there doesn't seem to have a degree from outside the u.s. in terms of pat texting -- patenting, publishing and starting companies. and similarly, one of the big reasons this has been studied in canada why immigrants earn less than similar natives is because there seems to be no return to foreign experience at all. so anytime you worked outside, outside canada, it doesn't increase your wage at all in canada. and, again, i find that in my data for the u.s., but again, this really surprised me, not for these innovators and outcomes. you get the same return to foreign experience as to the u.s. experience.

>> i would just add when you look at high-tech companies, you know, for many workers they say, well, it's hard to tell who's good and who's bad, but among the very best they really do believe that the very, you know, there is that one person or one or two people who are really important so that i heard from a google board member that when they were starting google earth, they found the right designer. the person who was supposed to head up the project, he was australian. and they said, well, we'll give you whatever you want to come to the unite. what they could not -- united states. what they could not give him was the permission, the work card for his wife to have a job in the united states, so google earth was done in australia because they believed that once you found the right person, that's what mattered, and that's what would make the difference. not all companies work that way, but certainly among the entrepreneurial, high-tech companies, there's a strong belief that at least a certain level of the work force, the individual matters immensely. um, let's see. i'm looking for someone who hasn't had a question yet. back in the borner.

>> al milliken, am media. what more do any of you know about the higher and lower education preparation of the immigrants you have studied, particularly what they have learned outside the united states? >> [inaudible] >> yeah. i was trying to find out about the preparation of immigrants have had, their studies outside the united states. >> um, well, in our study we were unable to assess the quality of the degree earned abroad or versus in the u.s., but, again, from the -- [inaudible] we know that the quality of education varies out in other countries as well as in the u.s.

the degree from cornell matters much more and is valued much more than from a smaller, a smaller university in, um -- >> [inaudible] >> okay. i'm not going to give a name. [laughter] but what was alluded in the earlier, in the earlier session is that employers who often have no idea how to evaluate a degree from, um, okay, i'll use my own country. [laughter] from a technical university in mull dove v.a., right? but they might know beijing university. so often what we, what happens is that there is, there is an ad hoc evaluation that is happening just based on the knowledge that they already have without a

proper system that would quantify and properly evaluate the credentials that were born, that were earned abroad and that would transfer them properly in the, properly in the education systems in the united states. >> very briefly. >> okay. well, some of what i said before was relevant, but i'll say also some people who are in favor of admitting very highly-educated immigrants to the u.s. say somewhat cynically that it can't be bad for the u.s. to have some foreign country pay for the education and have the u.s. reap the reward. but there is actually a cost to this apparent free gift which is that the older a person is when they arrive in the u.s., the lower their wage is. again, not so much for the innovative size, but for the

overall positivity and wage, it has a big impact. the more a person has studied abroad, the older they are, so they're more educated, but that effects the productivity. >> all right. i want to give our panelists their, their chance to leave you with parting words knowing that all of us have only 30-second brain capacities. they're all going to give you their last words in just 30 seconds. that'll be their takeaway messages. start with ron. >> sure. i'll just hit my key points very quickly again. the public discussion needs to disentangle temporary work visas from green cards, and i think the reality is that companies and business models are way ahead of the immigration policy debate. which is no surprise, usually, in innovation usually technology policy lags what goes on in terms of the reality of technologies out there. same thing seems to be happening right now. and so we should really reconfigure the debate around

what's really happening amongst companies and what they're doing at least in terms of work visas and employment-based green cards. and what we want in terms of goals, the normative side or as jennifer has put it, the objective functions of the various different constituents and stakeholders. >> jennifer? >> i think that a good point was brought up on the earlier panel, there's something that's not working that we're trying to fix. and i actually think in this domain that we're discussing with the exception of the big backlog for employment-based green cards, there isn't, actually, anything that needs to be fixed that's very major. a couple of caveats like the indentured servitude problem which i agree with. but because there isn't anything huge that needs to be fixed, i'm actually opposed to a points system, and i say this partly based on my experience with canada, but also from my study of who's doing well in the u.s. based on what visa