The Trump administration's approach towards hiring foreign workers and accepting foreign students into the U.S. has been largely hostile; the administration has repeatedly insisted that it seeks to protect the American workforce, which it argues has been marginalized by the import of cheap foreign labor.
However, this approach may be hindering the U.S.'s ability to lead the field in global innovation.
Current policies, which include raising H-1B visa fees, revoking hundreds of visas of international students and halting the provision of visas to internationals, have had a disincentivizing effect on foreign nationals from seeking educational or job opportunities in the U.S.
Studies show a 22% drop in the number of F-1 student visas issued in May 2025 compared to May 2024 and American big tech companies reported filing significantly fewer H-1B visa applications in late 2025 due to increasing costs.
A report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) in November 2025 also found that nearly $44 billion in economic contributions and over 378,000 American jobs are now under threat because of the decreasing number of prospective international students choosing to study in the U.S.
U.S. is at risk of lagging behind in tech innovation because of the brain drain
As the U.S. turns inward, many of its strategic competitors are seeking to fill the gap. The CAP report also revealed that various countries, including Spain, China and Canada, are setting up programs specifically designed to attract U.S.-based talent disillusioned with the Trump administration's policies.
The U.K. has also witnessed a surge in interest in its global talent visa due to an influx of U.S. companies seeking to establish subsidiaries across the Atlantic. Aversion towards foreign talent is accelerating the brain drain away from American shores
This brain drain could be particularly damaging for the American tech sector. Danielle Goldman is the co-founder of Build, a U.S.-based incubator for immigration solutions which offers cap-exempt visa programs to foreign talent seeking to work and study in the U.S. She spoke to International Business Times about the importance of immigrants for U.S. innovation.
"Immigrants have founded 65% of [U.S.-based] AI companies and 70% of U.S. graduates in AI are foreigners ... we will not survive [as a global tech leader in] the next five years if we do not infiltrate our current talent pool with foreign nationals who are trained to meet the needs of the next five years or decade ahead," Goldman argued.
Goldman points out that education systems outside of the U.S. are often better suited than the U.S. system for training the next generation of AI leaders. The Chinese education system, in particular, is reportedly ahead of America's in terms of both funding to integrate AI into education and the development of AI-powered educational tools.
Given this discrepancy, Goldman emphasizes that the U.S. needs to tackle "the dip in foreign registrations for and applications for our universities and colleges today ... in five years, we will see the demand for the skillsets that other education systems are instilling now."
U.S.-based but foreign-born workers and students are not the only ones considering a move away from the U.S. One third of U.S.-based STEM professionals reported that they would be open to relocation because of innovation-friendlier environments abroad; the Trump administration has introduced wide-ranging federal research cuts which, according to the Association of American Universities, is driving a "brain drain" of America's STEM workforce.
Investing in Immigrants to Increase Competitiveness and Modernize the U.S. Workforce
The cumulative effect of these immigrant and research-hostile policies is showing; Rafael Reif, President Emeritus, and Ray and Maria Stata, Professors of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) argue that the current U.S. government's failure to attract, educate and retain "the world's best science and engineering talent" and invest "in basic science" is contributing to its growing weakness relative to China in the tech sphere.
Semyon Dukach, Founding Partner at One Way Ventures, a U.S.-based venture capital fund that supports immigrant founders, told International Business Times that "the U.S. message towards immigrants right now is that we don't want them. That they can build world-changing AI companies elsewhere, and we don't care. But we do need immigrants, innovation needs immigrants, the economy needs immigrants."
The stats appear to corroborate Dukach's arguments; immigrant founders, innovators and employees have a proven track record of commercial success in the United States; Foster Global reports that over half of the U.S.'s billion-dollar startups have at least one immigrant founder.
A University of California, Berkeley study also found that companies with a heterogeneous (immigrant and native) founder team raised more funds, were more likely to be acquired and employ more people in the first three years after launch than their native-founder counterparts.
Members of the Trump administration have argued, however, that measures such as the H-1B price hike are designed specifically to improve the employment prospects of American-born workers in a saturated economy.
When the H-1B visa fee was increased in September 2025, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick justified the hike by arguing that it forced companies to consider whether a foreign-born "person [is] valuable enough to have a $100,000-a-year payment to the government, or [whether] they should head home, and they should go hire an American."
Goldman argues that this strategy is short-sighted when it comes to tech.
"You can't just snap your fingers and Americans take all the AI jobs that are open right now ... it's historically been necessary to reach beyond U.S. borders to find the best talent in the world [and] ... incorporate that ... into our companies and it's important today".
The positive contributions of immigrants to U.S. innovation go back a long way. In the early 1920s, immigration quotas introduced to reduce migration to the U.S. from Eastern and Southern Europe caused a 68% relative decline in U.S. patenting. It took a generation to recover from this shortfall.
Furthermore, high-skilled immigrant labor can be used, Goldman pointed out, to train American workers is especially notable in the AI sector. The United Nations estimates that, globally, the AI market will be worth $4.8 trillion by 2033 affecting up to 40% of global jobs. AI innovation is also a key area of strategic competition between the U.S. and its competitors, such as China.
However, research shows that only 31% of American workers receive AI training from their employer. Goldman therefore believes that reversing the current wave of anti-immigrant policies could therefore help reverse the trend of declining U.S. competitiveness and, paradoxically, help the U.S. workforce adapt to a changing economic landscape.
Only through that kind of openness to hiring foreign talent can the U.S. show that it is "serious about ensuring that we have the talent now to train the future U.S. workforce" and thus guarantee America's competitive longevity in tech, the CEO concluded.
