America Is Stronger With the Right Kind of Immigrants

The US-Mexico Border Wall is seen from a shopping center in San Ysidro, Calif., on May 28, 2019. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Commentary

Immigration is in the news. Most American voters want less immigration. Many welcome new immigrants but want them to arrive legally.

The former type helped reelect Donald Trump, who now has a double mandate to finally secure U.S. borders. Leaving the borders porous allowed massive groups of immigrants to wade across the Rio Grande and through holes in razor-wire fences. An occasional helping hand from border patrol officers was outrageous and dangerous both for encouraging illegal immigration and from the perspective of assisting the entry of criminals and spies into the country.

Already, Canada and Mexico are increasing border enforcement to save themselves from higher U.S. tariffs after Jan. 20. Trump is getting action from Mexico City and Ottawa by pressuring them with America’s most powerful bargaining chip: access to U.S. markets. And Trump has big plans to corral illegals and send them back home. That will decrease the number of workers available to U.S. homes and businesses but deter further illegal immigration.

More effective border enforcement will help the U.S. government tailor immigration to the right kinds of immigrants that we need while keeping out criminals. The right kind of immigrants are those who make America stronger, as they have for centuries.

The United States will have 3.8 million new manufacturing jobs over the next decade, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. Legal immigrants such as engineers and scientists will help increase the number of these jobs and grow the U.S. economy. They will strengthen U.S. military technologies. Those joining the U.S. military as conscripts will also boost American defenses.

Some highly-skilled immigrants will probably continue to acquire H-1B visas under the incoming Trump administration. They will expand U.S. scientific and engineering capabilities, making American industrial and military technology more competitive. Trump said on Dec. 28 that he supports H-1B visas, adding, “I have many H-1B visas on my properties.”

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are big proponents of this approach. Musk was born in South Africa and benefited from an H-1B visa himself. Ramaswamy’s parents immigrated from India. Both families have strengthened the United States.

Musk founded SpaceX. He was an early investor in Tesla and eventually became its CEO. Now, his companies employ over 100,000 Americans.

Ramaswamy founded Roivant Sciences in 2014. The company develops new medicines and has had six FDA approvals. It employs over 900 people, mostly in the United States.

America is arguably stronger because of the industries that Ramaswamy and Musk started. Had the United States denied them access, they would have gone elsewhere and could have established companies that develop technologies that help China or Russia more than the United States. America would have fewer jobs.

This is not to say that every immigrant should be a Musk or Ramaswamy or that we should be careless in our immigration policies. The success of many U.S. businesses and the jobs they provide are based on proprietary technologies that, if lost to an adversary country, could be used against the United States. So we should be careful that H-1B visas, for example, add to U.S. technology without siphoning it back to places like Russia and China.

Many H-1B visa holders are from China, the second-largest country of origin for U.S. immigrants after Mexico. Many Chinese immigrants reject the regime in Beijing and strive to move themselves, their families, and their investments permanently to the United States, thus strengthening the U.S. economy and technological ecosystem.

Some Chinese immigrants, however, continue to support the Chinese Communist Party after they move to the United States and, therefore, should know better. They could return to China with the scientific and technological knowledge they gathered in the United States. Some have engaged in industrial or commercial espionage within U.S. industry, national laboratories, and academia.

One of the most egregious examples is the “Los Alamos Club.” According to a report released in 2022, more than 160 Chinese researchers who worked at the U.S. National Laboratory in Los Alamos from 1987 to 2021 returned to China and worked for the regime, including on nuclear weapons, submarine, and hypersonic missile development. The United States granted one of these scientists a top-secret Q clearance that gave him access to U.S. nuclear secrets. You can be sure the regime demanded that he completely divulge these secrets when he returned to China.

U.S. labs, companies, and universities should obviously not rely on anyone who will likely leave for unfriendly countries with our most sensitive technologies. Instead, we should invest more in educating those U.S. citizens who are most loyal to America, in our science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. Costs for this new approach could be covered by government subsidies.

The third-largest group of immigrants in the United States is from India. India is a democracy, which makes it far less of a threat than communist China. It is not an adversary country like Iran or North Korea. But India is more friendly with China and Russia than it should be. Any U.S. technology lost to India could be sold on to U.S. adversaries in the future.

The same goes for any company or individual that does business with U.S. adversaries. Some of these individuals, like former Harvard chemistry professor Charles Lieber, are U.S. citizens who have reached the pinnacle of their fields. Nobody should be above the law when it comes to dangerous technology leaks to adversaries.

There are numerous ways that critical U.S. technologies can leak and thereafter be used to weaken the United States. The wrong kind of immigrants is one such vector, but not the only one. All technology leaks to China, Russia, and other adversary countries must be prioritized and stopped if we are to maximize the defense of American freedoms. Meanwhile, our immigration policies should welcome the right kind of immigrants: those who deprive our adversaries of their ingenuity, strengthen America, and are loyal to American values.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.