Challenge and Opportunity

The ability of people to move and work where they want is important for several national and global goals, including:

• Spurring economic growth and innovation – Seminal research in global development suggests that loosening barriers to mobility could lead to a massive 50% increase in world GDP.

• Expanding the frontier of human knowledge and capabilities – A recent estimate by a team of Stanford economists attributes almost a quarter of all US innovation since 1976 to high-skilled, foreign-born individuals.

• Reducing global poverty through transformative income gains for people from low income countries – International migration generates income increases of several hundreds of percent – for example, migrants from Tonga to New Zealand increased their income by 263% one year after migration (McKenzie, Stillman, and Gibson 2010). Similarly, current Malengo scholars in Germany are sending home remittances averaging 2200% of their per capita household incomes.

• Addressing demographic decline – High-income countries are facing decades of worker scarcity, requiring an estimated 450 million new working-age adults to sustain the current ratio of working aged to retired adults by 2050.

Through increased use of existing legal migration pathways, we can empower more immigrants to move and work where they want and are needed. This is possible under current law. Existing legal pathways—like the O-1 visa, Germany’s Skilled Immigration Act, and other pathways in the U.S. and globally—can be used to significantly increase the ability of talent and skills to move to opportunity. These pathways could enable thousands of additional individuals from scientists to solar panel installers to work in their country of choice.

For example:

• O-1 Visa: The O-1 visa is awarded by the U.S. government to foreign nationals of “extraordinary ability,” defined as meeting at least 3 of 8 listed requirements, such as holding an award from a well-known institution or having published research in a peer-reviewed journal. The O-1 visa category has no numerical cap, no per-country limit, and unlimited one year renewals.

• EU Student Visa: There are an estimated 1.1 million spots at European universities in countries like France, Belgium, and Germany which are free to attend and open to students from low- and middle-income countries. However, small barriers like a requirement that EU student visa applicants demonstrate proof that they can afford the first year of living costs in their host country deter students in low- and middle-income countries from pursuing this option.

• Japan Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) Visa: In 2019, Japan launched the SSW visa category to “welcome capable specialists from overseas countries to work in Japanese industrial fields,” ranging from aviation to manufacturing. However, uptake has remained below its potential, at only 13% of 350,000 visas created, with a major bottleneck being a shortage of fluent Japanese speakers.