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Shreeharsh Kelkar's avatar

>>There is one last caveat to how many H-1B visas are issued: some categories of employers – nonprofit research organizations, universities - are not subject to the cap. This means despite the H-1B “cap” being 91,800 visas/year, 386,000 H-1B visas were issued in FY 2023.

Does this mean that these entities hire more than double the numbers in the lottery? Is this consistent year after year?

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Vihung Marathe's avatar

Is there much literature about the effect of skilled migration on the source countries? i.e. “brain drain” vs remittances, but particularly any effect on productivity or innovation in the immigrants’ profession in their native countries?

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Josh T. Smith's avatar

Daniel di Martino has a ballpark figure for H-1B fiscal effects. But I think you're right that there's not any research of them specifically in this area.

https://manhattan.institute/article/the-lifetime-fiscal-impact-of-immigrants

You might like the modeling in this paper. Waugh looks at expanding the supply of H-1B visas. It's one I've always liked since it's meant to examine a real proposal to increase the number of that visa type:

https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/high-skilled-migration-united-states-and-its-economic-consequences/firm-dynamics-and-immigration-case-high-skilled-immigration

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Lauren Gilbert's avatar

I also thought about including https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/qje/qjae040/7912563?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false, because it gives an estimate of the long-run growth effects of H-1B visas, but the applied micro person in me won out and I focused on the visa lottery papers instead of model papers.

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Josh T. Smith's avatar

Always more to write about! Haha

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Lauren Gilbert's avatar

Substack likes to warn me that my posts are "too long to send by email" (for some email clients) as it is. ;)

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