1. Some Thoughts on High-skilled Migration and Immigration Reform Engineering Deans Institute New York City April 16, 2013 Panel Discussion Mark Regets National Science Foundation, Arlington and Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn (Affiliations for biographical purposes only) markregets@scipolicy.com 703-292-7813

2. Number of Postsecondary (Tertiary) degree holders: 1950-2010 Derived from Barro-Lee estimates of education attainment, 9/4/2011 data release

3. United States has had slower growth in degrees in the natural sciences and engineering relative to population: (Comparison of First Natural S&E University Degrees issued to 20-24 year old population )

4. Do U.S. Immigration and Visa Policies Reflect the Way R&D is Now Done?

5. 5 Changes in how S&T is done: More S&T activity of all types is done across borders –Teams and collaborations physically located in multiple countries –From basic research to product development to technical services Global capacity for S&T growing rapidly in most part of the world. S&T capacity much less centralized, U.S. recently about 1/3 of world R&D

6. 6 Multiple Node Knowledge Network Increased and more complex flows of students, workers, and finances Increased regional S&T collaboration and links between regions Global talent search, not necessarily for an “Einstein” Global education and careers

7. Do we already have too many high-skill worker?

8. In every decade, employment in science and engineering occupations has grown faster than the workforce as a whole

9. Employment has also been growing faster than degree production (until recently)

10. Some Parts of the STEM labor market have chronic issues: Older IT workers without EE or CS degrees face rehire problems if laid off. Young biomedical Ph.D.s headed for academic research face many years before directing their own research. Some fields (i.e. geology, aerospace eng.) are subject to boom or bust because of the concentration of employment in particular industries. Restrictions on labor supply may not be a very effective way to ease the pain on any of these issues.

11. Family-based and skill-based immigration are not opposites

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13. Postdoc Issues Around half of postdocs in the United States have their PhD from abroad. Most now enter on H-1b visas. Many provisions in proposed bill are designed to require paying a premium wage over American, prior efforts to recruit Americans, and other provisions that can cause problems for the use of H- 1Bs in normal hiring or recruitment.

14. BACKUP SLIDES

15. 15 Many U.S. citizen grad students are in departments dependent upon foreign students SOURCE: NSF/SRS Survey of Graduate Students and Postdocs (GSS) 2006

16. Entries into Japan of workers with a type of temporary work visa associated with high skills Source: Japan Statistical Handbook

18. Share of foreign students in higher education among 26 reporting OECD countries: 1998 and 2007

19. The proportion of population earning degrees has increased almost everywhere, including other developed countries. (First University Degrees issued to 20-24 year old population)