The National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) has just issued a report showing the importance of immigrants in the fields of science and engineering to America’s role as a leader in these critical areas. The NFAP report focuses on research, awards, entrepreneurship and education among new immigrants.
The report points out that:
- “Between 1901 and 1959, only one immigrant to the United States won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry while ,between 1960 and 2013, 23 immigrants won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry
- The percentage of foreign-born individuals with Ph.D.’s working in science and engineering in the United States rose from 23 percent in 1993 to 42 percent in 2010, a near doubling of the proportion of foreign-born in less than 20 years.
- Looking to the next generation of publicly-traded companies, particularly in the technology sector, a study from December 2011 found that, “Immigrants have started nearly half of America’s top 50 venture-funded companies and are key members of management or product development teams in more than 75 percent of our country’s leading cutting-edge companies.”
The NFAP contributes this rise in the proportion of immigrants in these fields to legal changes which opened the doors to increased immigration for highly-skilled and educated immigrants.
For more information on the process of employer-sponsored immigration for highly-skilled and -educated workers, click here. To discuss immigration opportunities for high-skilled workers, please contact us.