In an Increasingly Competitive Global Economy, the United States Can’t Afford to Lose the World’s Brightest Minds

As a recent Wall Street Journal editorial pointed out:

Amid one of the weakest economic recoveries on record, the central U.S. challenge is to restore growth, and one tool that doesn't get enough attention in Washington is immigration. … If the U.S. continues to send this human capital packing, it will find a home somewhere else, at America's loss.

We couldn’t agree more.

As proof, the Wall Street Journal cited a recent Kauffman Foundation survey of foreign-born, U.S.-educated students who returned to China or India to form their own companies, which found:

• Over 90 percent of Chinese and 60 percent of Indian returnee entrepreneurs said the availability of economic opportunities in their countries was a very important factor in their return.
   
• Merely five percent of Chinese respondents and 14 percent of Indians said opportunities were better in the United States than in their home countries to start their own businesses.

With 42 percent of U.S. engineering master’s and 53 percent of U.S. engineering Ph.D.s awarded to foreign-born students, America has a lot to lose!

America can’t risk its innovation leadership! – It’s time for bipartisan reforms to permanently fix the U.S. green card and visa systems for highly educated, foreign-born professionals.

Learn more about the benefits of highly educated, foreign-born professionals to the U.S. economy.

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Compete America (www.competeamerica.org) is a coalition of corporations, educators, research institutions and trade associations concerned about legal, employment-based immigration and committed to ensuring that the United States has the highly educated workforce necessary to ensure continued innovation, job creation and leadership in a worldwide economy.