The Immigration Advantage in the U.S.-China Strategic Contest for STEM Talent

executive summary: This essay argues that recruitment of globally mobile scientists, researchers, and inventors gives the U.S. an advantage in great-power competition with China, but one the U.S. risks squandering. main argument The U.S. has a powerful asymmetric advantage over the People's Republic of China in advancing its global technological leadership: the ability to draw on the top talent from around the world. The recruitment of international talent in STEM fields is a major force multiplier for U.S. scientific and technological enterprises, especially in critical and emerging technologies and defense-related industries. Attracting top international talent is not a tool that China can easily replicate. For all its efforts to lure its own émigrés back and attract international students, China is still a net emigration country, while the U.S. is the top destination for immigrants, especially scientists and inventors. However, the deteriorating conditions of legal pathways to immigration for high-skilled STEM experts threaten to undermine this strategic advantage. policy implications • The U.S. is becoming less attractive for globally mobile international talent over time, largely due to the onerous and worsening conditions facing legal immigrants. Most notably, there is a mismatch between the number of people allowed to apply and receive permanent residence each year, leading to untenably long—and growing—backlogs and associated wait times. • The U.S. could increase its innovative output by expanding the quantity and improving the quality of international STEM researchers welcomed to the country. It could do so through changes in laws and regulations or merely by better recruiting and retaining talent through increased uptake of existing programs. It could also achieve greater contributions from talent it already has recruited by removing visa barriers restricting innovation-generating activities. • Efforts by the Chinese government to transfer technologies illicitly through espionage pose a serious risk. This risk needs to be managed with care to protect sensitive information without setting back U.S. technological development.