Rob Long: Immigrants' Kids are Smarter

Children of immigrants are disproportionately better at science.  That's the conclusion of an interesting new study from the National Foundation for American Policy, a generally pro-immigration (legal, that is) think-tank.

It's an interesting study, and probably confirms what most of us knew deep down:

One surprising characteristic unites the majority of America's top high school science and math students – their parents are immigrants. While only 12 percent of the U.S. population is foreign-born, 70 percent of the finalists in the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search competition were the children of immigrants, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis. Just 12 of the 40 finalists at this year's competition of the nation's top high school science students had native-born parents. While former H-1B visa holders comprise less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, 60 percent of the finalists had parents who entered the U.S. on H-1B visas, which are generally the only practical way to hire skilled foreign nationals. Finalists' parents sponsored through a family preference category represented 7.5 percent of the total, about four times higher than their proportion in the U.S.

The conclusion of the study -- and I suppose its point -- is to show the value of H-1B visas to the American economy in general.  Smart kids who are great at science and math are absolutely crucial to a country that wants to compete.  

Of course, we're talking mostly about China and India.  And so the question is, by issuing H1-B visas, are we building up America's math and science future, or are we merely subsidising a competitor's growth?  In other words, do most of these smart kids of immigrant parents return to their home country?  The study says no: the achieving kids are the product of parents who came to this country initially with H1-B visas, stayed long enough to get a green card, and are on their way to full citizenship.

This is good news, no?  Legal immigration -- especially of highly educated, highly motivated future parents -- is a good thing for the American economy.

Here's the bad news: applications for H1-B visas is slowing way down.  From Globalvisas.com:

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released the numbers over the weekend; revealing just 5,900 H1B visa applications had been lodged for the 2012 fiscal year since the agency began accepting petitions on April 1.

The number of visas issued each year is capped at 65,000 – a number which is usually reached long before the year's end.

The cap for the 2011 fiscal year was reached in early January 2011 – just four months into the fiscal year.

This isn't a great sign.  Either we're making the visa process too complicated and expensive, or we're just not as popular as we used to be.