Immigrants accounted for a little under 20 percent of all inventors during the late 19th and early 20th century, notes the Harvard Business Review, with that number surging to approximately 30 percent today. Their research is clear—immigrants are playing an “outsize role” in technology and innovation:
The largest share of immigrants were involved in developing medical technology inventions, such as surgical sutures. But medical technology accounted for just 1% of all U.S. patents. In areas that had a much larger effect on the U.S. economy at this time – specifically electricity and chemicals, which accounted for 13.9% and 12.6% of all U.S. patents respectively – immigrants were also strongly represented. Migrant influence was widespread, with migrant inventors accounting for at least 16% of patents in every technology area. The majority of immigrant inventors originated from European countries, with Germans playing a particularly prominent role.
Areas of technology with higher levels of foreign-born expertise experienced much faster patent growth between 1940 and 2000 than otherwise comparable technology areas, in terms of both the number of patents and a citation-adjusted measure of patent “quality”. That relationship isn’t necessarily causal, however our results provide suggestive evidence that immigrant inventors played a key role in the development of America’s technology leadership.
Migrant inventors may have an outsized influence on innovation for two primary reasons. First, immigrant inventors like Nikola Tesla, who was born in Serbia, develop important ideas in their own right. Additionally, their insights may augment the skills of domestic inventors through collaboration. For example, in the 1940s Canadian immigrant James Hillier developed the first commercially viable electron microscope at Radio Corporation of America alongside Ladislaus Marton, a Belgian inventor, Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian inventor, and U.S.-born engineers.
Donald Trump’s racist policies are already having devastating effects when it comes to attracting the best and the brightest to our laboratories, businesses, and schools. Scientific American reported last month that “foreign-born scientists say they are reconsidering plans to work or study in the United States” due to Trump’s failed Muslim bans. Among schools, the prestigious University of California system reported their sharpest decline in foreign applicants in over a decade. Nationwide, 40 percent of colleges and universities have reported a similar drop. As Quartz noted earlier this year, “if the US government decides it no longer wants these people,” other nations are gladly swooping in on our losses:
The Canadian government ran an ad campaign to tempt high-skilled immigrant workers in the US to come north. The Malaysian government actively targets skilled foreigners by allowing them to easily change employers and bring their family. The Chilean government even started a program that pays highly educated foreign entrepreneurs to work in the country for six months.
Meanwhile, the only immigration message coming from the white nationalists in the White House is a giant “Get out.”