Should Foreign STEM Graduates Get Green Cards? >
Green Cards for STEM Grads Should Be Limited
While OK for Ph.D.'s, extending green cards to bachelor's or master's STEM grads would do more harm than good
May 25, 2012
About Mark Krikorian:
Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. He is the author of The New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal and How Obama is Transforming America Through Immigration.
"Staple a green card to every foreign STEM grad's diploma!" say the politicians and lobbyists. But the real question is, which foreign STEM graduates should get green cards?
Foreign students getting bachelor's degrees most certainly shouldn't, because that level of achievement is hardly special. Even the tech companies pushing for the "staple" legislation don't want that; Texas Instruments's human resources director testified before Congress last year that her firm doesn't sponsor foreign students with bachelor's degrees because there are plenty of Americans to choose from. In fact, there were in 2010 1.8 million Americans with engineering bachelor's degrees who were not working in engineering. And that's not all STEM fields—just engineering.
[Check out the U.S. News STEM education blog.]
At the other end of the education spread are the relatively modest number of foreign Ph.D. recipients—and they mostly stay already, making new legislation redundant. A report earlier this year found that nearly two thirds of foreign students who received a science-related Ph.D. in 2004 were still here in 2009. And the figures for India and China, the top countries, were 79 percent and 89 percent, respectively. The percentage taking advantage of a green-card giveaway would probably not be much higher; believe it or not, some foreign students actually want to return to their native lands.
[See a collection of political cartoons on immigration.]
It's those in the middle who the debate is focused on—foreign master's degree recipients. Their skill level is higher than that of bachelor's degree holders, while their numbers are sufficiently large that they can be used by employers to hold down wages. And the current number of foreign master's degree recipients is nothing compared to what we'd see if a "staple" bill were passed; the Brookings Institution has warned that such legislation would result in "inducing the enrollment of poor-quality foreign students in U.S. higher education institutions simply to obtain green cards."
A green-cards-for-grads bill that was limited to Ph.D. recipients in hard sciences would do little harm and maybe even some good, in streamlining the immigration process for people who are staying anyway. But broadening the benefit to master's degree holders would be just another cheap-labor program for industry.
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- Other Arguments
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Yes — Research shows that foreign-born STEM grads create jobs for native workers
TAMAR JACOBY, President of ImmigrationWorks USA
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Yes — U.S. STEM-educated foreigners should be allowed to stay in the United States
JEFF FLAKE, U.S. Representative from Arizona
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No — STEM industries have plenty of labor without foreign grads sticking around
HAL SALZMAN, Sociologist at the E.J Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University
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No — There are better ways to correct the dysfunction of our current immigration system
DANIEL STEIN, President of Federation for American Immigration Reform
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No — Broad-based exemptions would result in foreign STEM grads who substitute rather than complement American workers
RON HIRA, Co-author of 'Outsourcing America'
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No — Foreign STEM graduates shouldn't get a green card stapled to their diploma
NORM MATLOFF, Professor at University of California, Davis
