Topics
MIT SMR Strategy Forum
Each month, we pose a question about business, management, technology, or public policy to our panel of academic experts. Here you can see what they think and why.
Learn more about this series
We asked our panel of strategy experts to tell us how strongly they agree with this statement:
Restrictions on skilled immigration will cause U.S. firms to shift more operations overseas.
■
Raw Responses
■
Responses weighted by panelists’ level of confidence
Panelists
| Panelist | Vote | Confidence | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Strongly Agree | 10 | “Skilled immigration — combined with sophisticated capital markets — has been at the heart of American dominance in the new economy. It is also vital in engineering and other fields that could move offshore.” |
|
Agree | 8 | “Less skilled immigration will make it harder to hire skilled workers in the U.S., which leads to more being hired outside the U.S. That might be done by non-U.S. firms who end up losing out. Take out ‘U.S.,’ and the answer is clear.” |
|
Strongly Agree | 9 | “Restrictions on skilled immigration HAVE ALREADY led firms to move some operations to other countries. More restrictions will lead to more moves.” |
|
Agree | 7 | “In the tech sector, companies struggle to get more talent and already have large operations in London, Israel, Bangalore, China, and other locations. Substitution is already happening.” |
|
Strongly Agree | 9 | “It’s already happening to the benefit of Canada.” |
|
Strongly Agree | 10 | “Highly skilled labor is essential for just about every American firm’s success. If it can’t come to them, they go to it.” |
|
Strongly Agree | 10 | “Skilled labor, especially in engineering and data science, is scarce. Firms compete vigorously for the best talent, and if restrictions will be imposed, firms will have to build talent pools abroad.” |
|
Strongly Agree | 10 | “This is very consistent with the law of supply and demand in a global market for human capital. And we already see evidence of this phenomenon in U.S. firm operations across the Canadian border.” |
|
Agree | 8 | “The complication is Trump’s tariffs. Otherwise, it is virtual certainty…” |
|
Strongly Agree | 7 | “Moving overseas as a hedging strategy is happening already.” |
|
Agree | 5 | “If firms cannot get the talent that they need at home, they will need to shift more work abroad. But the upward wage pressure could also lead more U.S. citizens to pursue the jobs in question.” |
|
Strongly Agree | 9 | “In my view, enabling skilled immigration is absolutely critical to long-term U.S. economic growth. The obvious contrast is with Japan, which is facing a major demographic crisis.” |
|
Agree | 6 | “Restrictions will certainly hurt U.S. firms in terms of their productivity and innovation (which will therefore harm American wages). The shifting operations effect is less important than this.” |
|
Agree | 7 | “I would think this effect would be focused on R&D/development activities as this effect won’t seem to impact the already strong forces pushing/keeping manufacturing overseas.” |
|
Disagree | 5 | “Literature says skilled immigrants boost U.S. firms’ foreign investment, so the relationship likely goes the other way. Without skills, however, no reason to think this implies more domestic investment.” |
|
Disagree | 5 | “In software outsourcing, H-1B visa holders were important complements to offshore work. Broadly, offshoring and immigration are likely to be complements.” |
|
Agree | 6 | “I suspect the larger effect will be to simply make U.S. firms less competitive, but we will see some offshoring among firms facing skills shortages here in the U.S.” |
|
Strongly Agree | 8 | |
|
Agree | 8 | “The measure would reinforce the trend of increasing R&D investments outside the U.S. and Europe by companies headquartered in these regions.” |
|
Agree | 8 | “Restricting skilled immigration will lead to high-value R&D and technical work being shifted to countries where the skilled talent exists.” |
|
Agree | 10 | “It will definitely increase labor costs and create skilled labor scarcity in some industries. For some firms, the efficient option will be to create (or expand) operations outside of the U.S.” |
|
Agree | 6 | |
|
Neither Agree nor Disagree | 7 | “This may be true for tech and (some) engineering jobs, but organizations can’t readily relocate many high-skill, user-facing professionals, such as doctors, nurses, professors, etc. Some jobs are simply not mobile.” |
|
Did Not Answer | ||
|
Did Not Answer | ||
|
Did Not Answer | ||
|
Did Not Answer | ||
|
Did Not Answer |
Comment (1)
Dominic Shum