Doctoral Dissertation Research: International Students and Talent Retention Strategies in the United States

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

As American universities recruit more international students, businesses and policymakers are paying more attention to the role that these students could play in the US labor market. International students are particularly valuable to science and technology industries, since they are more likely than domestic students to study STEM subjects. The US does not have specific policies in place to retain foreign-born graduates in the workforce. Canada, like most other advanced industrial countries, has implemented talent retention strategies (TRSs) that encourage foreign students to stay by giving them easier access to work permits, permanent residency, and citizenship. Furthermore, talent retention is a persistent theme in immigration policy debates there. This project uses documentary evidence and interviews with policymakers and advocates to explain why TRSs passed in Canada but not in the US. This is an important issue for NSF funding because the structure of the scientific labor force underlies all aspects of science and innovation policy. Some of the world's most rigorous and most advanced science is done in American universities and research institutes. Any change in immigration policy that affects skilled workers and higher education will have an effect on American science and American scientists. As such, it is in the NSF?s interest to support scientifically rigorous, politically unbiased research on the immigration policymaking process. The SciSIP grant funds semi-structured interviews with policymakers and advocates in the Washington, DC area with interests in immigration and the STEM workforce. In addition, the PI specifically targets actors in the academic science and information technology industries, which have historically been highly dependent on foreign-born skilled workers. These interviews include advocates on all sides of the policy debate. Interviews in Canada have already been supported by competitive grants from other funders. The PI transcribes the interview transcripts from Ottawa and DC, combines them into a dataset with legislative debates on this issue, and codes the entire dataset for themes using qualitative data analysis software. Themes are derived both inductively from the source material and deductively from the literature. This project contributes empirical data about how immigration policy is made and who is involved in making it. At the theoretical level, this project results in a revision of theories of policymaking that are relevant to public policy researchers across the social sciences. Existing theoretical frameworks can explain why some countries have chosen to implement TRSs, but they fall short in explaining negative cases like the US. Political economy approaches, for example, predict that advanced democracies have a high level of openness towards the migration of skilled workers, as the social and political costs are minimal but the economic benefits are significant and highly concentrated in the hands of business elites. Yet despite the fact that policy elites and business interests have reached a consensus in favor of skilled migration, the US has not developed policies to encourage international students to stay in the country. Bringing in additional insights from sociology, economics, human geography, and political science, this dissertation seeks to solve this puzzle.