High-Skilled Immigration and International Students Are Good For the U.S. — And the World: Making H1-B and F-1 visas more difficult to get harms U.S. competitiveness in AI and innovation worldwide.

Dear friends,

One of the most effective things the U.S. or any other nation can do to ensure its competitiveness in AI is to welcome high-skilled immigration and international students who have the potential to become high-skilled. For centuries, the U.S. has welcomed immigrants, and this helped make it a worldwide leader in technology. Letting immigrants and native-born Americans collaborate makes everyone better off. Reversing this stance would have a huge negative impact on U.S. technology development.

I was born in the UK and came to the U.S. on an F-1 student visa as a relatively unskilled and clueless teenager to attend college. Fortunately I gained skills and became less clueless over time. After completing my graduate studies, I started working at Stanford under the OPT (Optional Practical Training) program, and later an H-1B visa, and ended up staying here. Many other immigrants have followed similar paths to contribute to the U.S.

I am very concerned that making visas harder to obtain for students and high-skilled workers, such as the pause in new visa interviews that started last month and a newly chaotic process of visa cancellations, will hurt our ability to attract great students and workers. In addition, many international students without substantial means count on being able to work under OPT to pay off the high cost of a U.S. college degree. Gutting the OPT program, as has been proposed, would both hurt many international students’ ability to study here and deprive U.S. businesses of great talent. (This won’t stop students from wealthy families. But the U.S. should try to attract the best talent without regard to wealth.)

Failure to attract promising students and high-skilled workers would have a huge negative impact on American competitiveness in AI. Indeed, a recent report by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence exhorts the government to “strengthen AI talent through immigration.”

If talented people do not come to the U.S., will they have an equal impact on global AI development just working somewhere else? Unfortunately, the net impact will be negative. The U.S. has a number of tech hubs including Austin, Boston/Cambridge, Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Silicon Valley, and these hubs concentrate talent and foster innovation. (This is why cities, where people can more easily find each other and collaborate, promote innovation.) Making it harder for AI talent to find each other and collaborate will slow down innovation, and it will take time for new hubs to become as advanced.

Nonetheless, other nations are working hard to attract immigrants who can drive innovation — a good move for them! Many have thoughtful programs to attract AI and other talent. There are the UK’s Global Talent Visa, France’s French Tech Visa, Australia’s Global Talent Visa, UAE’s Golden Visa, Taiwan’s Employment Gold Card, China’s Thousand Talents Plan, and many more. The U.S. is fortunate that many people already want to come here to study and work. Squandering that advantage would be a huge unforced error.

Beyond the matter of national competitiveness, there is the even more important ethical matter of making sure people are treated decently. I have spoken with international students who are terrified that their visas may be canceled arbitrarily. One recently agonized about whether to attend an international conference to present a research paper, because they were worried about being unable to return. In the end, with great sadness, they cancelled their trip. I also spoke with a highly skilled technologist who is in the U.S. on an H-1B visa. Their company shut down, leading them — after over a decade in this country, and with few ties to their nation of origin — scrambling to find alternative employment that would enable them to stay.

These stories, and many far worse, are heartbreaking. While I do what I can to help individuals I know personally, it is tragic that we are creating such an uncertain environment for immigrants, that many people who have extraordinary skills and talents will no longer want to come here.

To every immigrant or migrant in the U.S. who is concerned about the current national environment: I see you and empathize with your worries. As an immigrant myself, I will be fighting to protect everyone’s dignity and right to due process, and to encourage legal immigration, which makes both the U.S. and individuals much better off.

Keep building!

Andrew