Demand for H-1B visas, which allow U.S. firms to recruit high-skilled foreign workers, has dramatically exceeded the supply—there were 200,000 applications in 2019 for the 85,000 visas that were available.

Fact of the Week: Winning the H-1B Lottery Increases a Start-up’s Odds of Going Public in Five Years by Up To 53 Percent

Fact of the Week: Winning the H-1B Lottery Increases a Start-up's Odds of Going Public in Five Years by Up To 53 Percent

A body of academic research has shown that high-skill immigration has a significant positive effect on the number of patents companies file. But according to a study published last month, past research may have underestimated the impact H-1B workers have on innovation more broadly.

Fact of the Week: Firms That Seek H-1B Visas Have Higher Rates of Product Reallocation

A recent study found that the number of H-1B visa holders is highly correlated with the number of issued patents in a state.

Fact of the Week: H-1B Visa Workers Contribute to the Number of Issued Patents in the United States

The United States received enough H-1B applications to meet the 85,000-application cap by the end of February 2022, just five months into the 2022 fiscal year.

Fact of the Week: The U.S. Hit its H-1B Visa Cap Just 5 Months into FY22

When skilled migrants come to a new country, they bring both expertise in their fields and connections to experts in their home countries, increasing the likelihood that they will produce new inventions in the fields in which their home countries excel. New research has provided the broadest estimation of this effect, examining immigration between 135 countries and patents in 651 technological categories from 1990 to 2010.

Fact of the Week: When Countries Double Immigration of Inventors From Places That Specialize in a Given Technology, They Are 25 to 50 Percent More Likely to Produce New Patents in That Technology After 10 Years

It is commonly assumed that the wealth and other benefits that highly innovative firms produce are concentrated among high-skilled workers, since they are the ones who are most likely to be innovating. But a new study casts doubt on this presumption, using matched employee-employer data from the United Kingdom.

Fact of the Week: Low-Skilled Workers Earn 20 Percent More at Highly Innovative Firms

Proponents of increased high-skilled immigration routinely cite research that measures the size and growth of firms created by immigrant entrepreneurs. A new study goes farther, examining the performance of immigrant-owned high-tech firms across 16 metrics of innovation, from the production of publishable findings to patent applications.

Fact of the Week: Immigrant-Owned High-Tech Firms Outperform Native-Owned Firms Across 15 of 16 Measures of Innovation

The lottery system in place for distributing the very limited number of H-1B visas is inefficient and makes accessing labor difficult for American business, says Adams Nager in Innovation Files.

Worried About Foreign H-1B Hirers? Award More Visas!

Immigrants, whom make up about 14 to 15 percent of the U.S. population, have an outsized role in entrepreneurship, starting over 20 percent of new businesses in America.

Fact of the Week: Firms That Win an H-1B Visa Lottery Experience Wage Increases for Most Employees

Related

Fact of the Week: Winning the H-1B Lottery Increases a Start-up’s Odds of Going Public in Five Years by Up To 53 Percent

Fact of the Week: Firms That Seek H-1B Visas Have Higher Rates of Product Reallocation

Fact of the Week: H-1B Visa Workers Contribute to the Number of Issued Patents in the United States