Via Dingel, a paper from NBER regarding immigrant contributions as entrepreneurs, that relates to earlier musings regarding specialization motivated by language-dependent opportunities:

Higher H-1B admissions increase immigrant science and engineering (SE) employment and patenting by investors with Indian and Chinese names in cities and firms dependent upon the program relative to their peers. Most specifications find limited effects for native SE employment or patenting. We are able to rule out displacement effects and small crowding-in effects may exist. Total SE employment and invention increases with higher admissions primarily through direct contributions of immigrants.

[Crowding in would mean that Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs enable even more entrepreneurial activity than would occur in their absence, which I suppose would manifest itself as: Chinese friend takes lots of money from his parents, uses his super-programming skills and creates mega-algorithm. I help him by making phone calls to people I know. At the very least, the paper presents convincing evidence that there is no 'opportunity stealing' that occurs from immigrant entrepreneurs. In other words, it's a generate wealth and opportunities for free card.]

This research dovetails nicely with this incredibly good idea for a Startup Visa, propagated by a number of entrepreneur advocates, where immigrants would be eligible for H-1B status given certain types of self employment. At present, the H-1B is sort of a 21st century version of skilled indentured servitude, whereby US firms that have the legal apparatus to sponsor international hires can enjoy the benefits of cheaper (skilled) labor, since they have very limited exit opportunities (unless they flee home, which more and more are doing).

The ability to rapidly integrate immigrant labor (skilled and unskilled) is a feature almost entirely unique to the U.S. (and Canada). This factor alone assures much better long-term prospects than anywhere else in the world, including China. The extent to which deliberate policy helps or (as of late) harms this situation will be a major factor in determining Americans’ future wellbeing.

My sincere hope is that one day artificial barriers to population movement are viewed akin to slavery: at present, the geography of one’s birth is a fairly deterministic measure of potential quality of life. Preventing people from leaving failed and dysfunctional states is a crime of omission nearly as damning as actions of leaders responsible for such horrid conditions. Morality aside, there are very pragmatic reasons to be pro-immigration: the one-in-a-billion Yao Ming of Quantum Physics who fails to get his F-1 Visa, and pioneers the 21st century PRC version of a Manhattan Project.

The US is in the very unique position of being able to: steal all of the world’s smart people. We wouldn’t even need to give them any money – just make it easier and quicker to navigate the bureaucratic cluster**** that is immigration and naturalization. The US is much better than other developed countries at absorbing and integrating immigrants once they have arrived, both socially and economically. Visit a Turkish community in Germany or a Chinese ghetto in Japan for a relevant point of comparison to the Latinization of southern California. At the very least, reform of immigration in the long-term will be necessary to mitigate the effects of a rapidly aging population. In the short-term, however, poorly implemented security policy is going to take away one of the United States’ most unique advantages: a constant inflow of very talented people (see Ritholtz’s “Economics, Security, and the Decline of the US Creative Class.” What will they do instead? From my limited vantage point, it seems to involve being hardworking and entrepreneurial elsewhere.

This isn’t to say that people aren’t moving. This UNDP report highlights the importance of intranational migration, as well as the prevalence of migration among developing countries (interesting other facts: 1 in 7 people worldwide are migrants, and only 2 out of 5 migrants go from developing to developed countries). Below is a depiction of the concentration of educated immigrants, from their interactive data exhibit:

Research in the United States found that a 1.3 percent increase in the share of migrant university graduates increased the number of patents issued per capita by a massive 15 percent, with marked contributions from science and engineering graduates without any adverse effects on the innovative activity of residents.

All is not lost: current naturalization laws mean that I have a much better shot at marriage. Green card, anyone?