Skilled Immigrants

I was at a dinner Thursday night where an ideologically diverse group of people were talking about entrepreneurship, and basically everyone agreed that America could boost its growth rate by being more welcoming to skilled immigrants. And frankly, I just don't see any way of disputing this. I think low-skill immigration is good for America, but even by the standards of those who think it's badly surely more high-skill immigration would be a good thing. If we automatically let foreigners who complete a degree at an American university stay as a permanent resident, they're not going to end up on food stamps or selling drugs on the streetcorner or whatever it is people are worried about.

There are a lot of different mechanisms through which the goal of more high-skill migrants could be achieved, and we should be doing them.