To expand growth in AI, we must invest in our workforce
President Biden recently issued a sweeping artificial intelligence executive order, marking the country’s most ambitious attempt to regulate the growing tech industry and its use of AI in our everyday lives. The attempt to establish guardrails in an ever-evolving industry is groundbreaking and helps ensure that the U.S. can maintain leadership in this growing strategic and national security field.
Much like a new car leaving the lot, the effectiveness of the order’s tech regulations is bound to depreciate, given the rapidly evolving nature of the AI industry. But the enduring impacts of the order’s immigration reforms represent a significant and lasting step toward addressing a pressing national security crisis: our dire workforce deficit.
The United States faces a shortage of skilled workers, exacerbated by demographic shifts. By 2030, an estimated 21 percent of Americans will be over 65, while the working-age population will remain stagnant.
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This has implications for both our economy and national security. In the defense sector, hiring challenges are pervasive, with 80 percent of defense companies struggling to find STEM workers. If we do not address this workforce gap, it will hinder our ability to meet growing demands and maintain U.S. leadership in critical technology fields such as artificial intelligence.
In response to this challenge, the executive order aims to reshape U.S. visa policies to enhance competitiveness by streamlining processes for international visa holders, particularly those in STEM and important technology fields. The key provisions include simplifying visa renewal for international students and scholars, modernizing H-1B visa rules, updating the J-1 Exchange Visitor Skills List, establishing a Global AI Talent Attraction Program, and possibly amending the Schedule A list of designated shortage occupations for green cards.
We applaud the Biden administration for streamlining the visa process for workers with specialized expertise. Nonetheless, the administration must not settle with an industry-specific “AI talent surge” but should instead work toward something greater.
To fully realize our potential to bolster national security as well as spur economic growth and expand domestic industries, the United States must continue to open new channels for high-skilled immigration across all sectors. In a recently published white paper for the Council on National Security and Immigration, we highlight five ways we could leverage our immigration system to counter demographic and workforce deficits that are hindering our security.
More than 700,000 highly educated and accomplished individuals unsuccessfully apply for H-1B visas every year. This category of visas is for professional workers, with an annual cap that does not change based on market needs. To obtain an H-1B visa, a worker must be sponsored by a U.S. employer. For fiscal 2023, about 110,000 visas were granted out of nearly 760,000 eligible applications. Given the huge, unmet demand for such workers, the H-1B cap should be substantially increased. Otherwise, we will continue to offshore talent to competitors.
Another means to expand our skilled workforce is to increase opportunities for foreign students educated in the United States to remain in the country after graduation, by permitting them to possess “dual intent.” This would allow foreign-born STEM students to apply for green cards while in student status.
We also urge the administration to follow through and broaden the U.S. Department of Labor’s Schedule A list of job categories. Schedule A should be updated to support current occupational shortages in strategic fields such as defense and critical technologies, supply chains, and needed STEM occupations.
Additionally, the U.S. should expand National Interest Waivers for EB-2 green cards in critical sectors, to assess merit, national significance, and potential benefits to the U.S. that align with national security. Similarly, the Department of Defense should reinstate the MAVNI program, creating pathways for highly skilled immigrants to join the military.
Finally, DACA recipients and other Dreamers should have a way to earn permanent status and eventual citizenship. Brought to the U.S. as children, they become productive, fully acculturated members who wish to serve their country. Granting them permanent status empowers them as valuable contributors to our society.
Unlike many other national issues, a burgeoning bipartisan consensus exists around the need for commonsense regulation for advanced technology like AI. But without a skilled workforce to usher in a new, responsible tech era, our shared goal will remain unworkable. The time has come for us to invest in the people essential to drive our future forward and bring the valuable skillsets of immigrants to the table.
Theresa Cardinal Brown and Margaret D. Stock are members of the Council on National Security and Immigration.
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