Immigration and patents
Reader's Digest (Rd.com)
June, 2002
Do immigrants, in the popular phrase, "take jobs" from
Americans? This may take place in low-pay sectors of the economy,
such as child-care -- though it's not clear, when this happens, if
immigrants are doing anything other than performing work that Americans
don't want to perform at the wages paid. At the higher end of the
economy, however, immigrants may be "supplying jobs." An
analyst from the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, an independent
research foundation, reports:
"In an attempt to quantify the contributions of immigrants to
America's industrial cutting edge, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
(AdTI) completed a 1996 study, updated in 2001, that used a well-known
indicator of technological innovation-issuance of new patents-to measure
immigrants' inventiveness and spirit of enterprise. Examining 250
recently issued U.S. patents chosen at random, AdTI found that more
than 25 percent of the patents in a random sample of 48 were issued
to immigrants alone or to immigrants collaborating with U.S.-born
coinventors.
"This is significantly higher than immigrants' proportion of
the [adult] U.S. population. The immigrant inventors identified in
the study included researchers, executives, entrepreneurs, and an
MIT professor. Four started their own businesses, generating over
1,600 jobs. The findings also seemed to justify concerns long expressed
by foreign governments about "brain drain"-the economic
loss suffered when highly skilled citizens immigrate to the United
States to pursue their careers." (From The World & I, May,
2000)
June, 2002 / Reader's Digest online
