[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 37 (Monday, March 18, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2251-S2253]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMMIGRANTS AND JOBS
Mr. ABRAHAM. I would like to alert my Senate colleagues to
today's editorial by the Wall Street Journal on why the Congress should
think twice before cutting legal immigration.
As currently written, the legal immigration reform measures, H.R.
2202 and S. 1394, would slash legal immigration by nearly half, largely
through the elimination of whole categories of family-sponsored
immigration by U.S. citizens. In my judgment, the drastic cuts in legal
immigration contemplated in these bills would hurt U.S. economic
growth, job creation; and competitiveness. The fact is that many
immigrants contribute to our economic well-being by inventing new
products, starting new entrepreneurial businesses, and creating jobs
for Americans: A new study by immigration policy analyst Philip Peters
found that one in four patents in this country is created by immigrants
alone or by immigrants collaborating with U.S. born coinventors. Four
of the immigrants surveyed in Mr. Peter's study started their own
businesses, generating over 1,600 jobs here in America.
Mr. President, it is also important to point out that not all these
talented immigrants and entrepreneurs came to America through the
employment-based immigration system; some of them, like the Intel
Corp.'s founder Andrew Grove, arrived through the refugee system.
Others came through the family-sponsored system as minor children,
adult children, and siblings. The bottom line is that restrictions on
immigration categories not labeled as ``economic'' will end up hurting
our economy and our competitiveness.
Both the academic literature and empirical evidence strongly suggest
that legal immigrants make important positive contributions to American
society. I would hope that my colleagues would keep this fact in mind
as we debate the merits of the pending legal immigration reform bill. I
ask that the Wall Street Journal article and the study by Mr. Peters be
printed in the Record.
[From the Wall Street Journal, Mar. 18, 1996]
Review & Outlook
scan the Congress
First, require all laws that apply to the rest of the
country also apply equally to the Congress.--Contract With
America, September 27, 1994.
Wise words, and we hope they apply to the immigration bill
being pushed on the House floor by Congressman Lamar Smith
(R., Texas) and up for a vote as early as Tuesday night. By
all means, set up a little office in the House gym and let
Congresspeople be the first to line up for their retina
scans.
Indeed, such an amendment was pondered by Colorado Democrat
Pat Schroeder, bless her palpitating heart, though it didn't
make the long list of amendments and resolutions available
Friday. While the Republican Contract also called for a
smaller government, Representative Smith's brainstorm would
move toward requiring all citizens to get verification from a
federal database before they are allowed to take a new job.
Like the Senate version of the bill, it would also pilot a
``voluntary'' national ID system, although both sides, for
the moment, seem to be backing away from the sinister
biometric identifiers such as retina scans we heard about
earlier.
The ID system is an ornament, of course, on the bill
reducing legal immigration by nearly half, cutting family
reunions and slashing the intake of refugees. It at least has
the virtue of not hiding behind arguments about illegal
immigration; it is purely a mean-spirited outburst against
legal immigration. The horde of amendments and resolutions
try to separate ``good'' immigrants--former H'Mong soldiers,
for example, from ``bad'' immigrants--parents of citizens,
for example. All of this is to be decided by a Congress that
routinely deplores micromanagement from inside the Beltway;
proposals to vitiate the family unification principle for
immigration come from the same lips that deplore the decline
of family values.
The reality of the immigration contribution to American
society comes clear in a study by Philip Peters of the Alexis
de Tocqueville Institute. As a proxy for intellectual and
economic contribution, Mr. Peters looked at recent U.S.
patents. He found that one patent in four in this country is
created by immigrants or immigrants working with U.S.-born
engineers or investors. This is three times their presence in
our population (8.7%), so presumably immigrants are out there
doing more than their share to keep the U.S. competitive with
Japan.
Nor of course did all the patenters in the Tocqueville
study enter the country on skilled worker visas. Take
Alexander Owczarz (O-zarz), a product development engineer
who stopped counting after registering his 25th U.S. patent.
Mr. Owczarz reckons that one recent patent alone generated 20
jobs at Semitool, the Kalispell, Montana, exporter where he
works. Mr. Owczarz is a citizen now, but he entered this
country on a tourist visa when he got sick of Communist
Poland. Nineteen-nineties restrictionists would expel people
like Mr. Owczarz when they overstay their visa.
Or how about refugees? Mr. Smith would cut them.
Tocqueville found Ernesto E. Blanco, a professor at MIT who
fled Havana in 1960 on a visa provided through a special
accelerated program to rescue Cubans from Castro. Mr. Blanco
has 13 patents, including a flexible arm that makes
endoscopic surgery easier. There are more famous examples:
Smith-Simpson-style legislation would bar the door to the
future equivalents of Intel's Hungarian refugee, Andrew
Grove. For that matter, another big job creator in Silicon
Valley, Borland International, was founded by an illegal
immigrant, Philippe Kahn.
In recent days we've seen growing recognition of these
points. On the Senate side, Spencer Abraham was able to
defeat the far
[[Page S2252]]
more senior Alan Simpson, and split the Senate legislation
into two bills, on legal and illegal immigration. On the
House side Congressmen Dick Chrysler (R., Michigan), Sam
Brownback (R., Kansas), Howard Berman (D., California) and
Phil Crane (R., Illinois) were able to squeeze an unfriendly
rules committee into letting them offer an amendment that
would remove all Mr. Smith's cutbacks on legal, family-
sponsored immigration. Steve Chabot, a freshman Republican,
and John Conyers, a Democrat, are offering an amendment to
strike the odious ID system.
For freshmen Republicans, this is an issue of heritage. Put
bluntly, are they children of Ronald Reagan and the House
Contract, or Pat Buchanan and his nativist campaign? Between
Senator Simpson and Representative Smith, all of the noxious
provisions are likely to come back with the conference
committee report. The best hope is that the bills will fall
on their own weight, like Hillary Clinton's health-care
boondoggle, and that the issue can be taken up by another
Congress where cooler heads prevail.
____
Made in the USA: Immigrants, Patents, and Jobs
Executive summary
In an effort to quantify the contribution of immigrants to
U.S. technological innovation, the Alexis de Tocqueville
Institution performed a study of recent U.S. patents. Using a
random selection of 1988 and 1994 patents, we found:
Based on the responses to our survey, about one patent in
four (26.4%) is created by immigrants alone or by immigrants
collaborating with U.S.-born co-inventors.
Based on our entire sample (i.e. counting nonresponses as
nonimmigrant inventors), about one patent in five (19.2%)
involves immigrants as sole or co-inventors. That's a
conservative estimate with a 5% margin of error.
Immigrants account for about 8.7% of the U.S. population.
Hence, the study shows immigrants to be more than twice as
likely as the general population to generate patented
innovations.
overview: immigrants contribute twice their share of patents
Scores of anecdotes have created a poetic image of
immigrants who arrive as refugees, students, laborers or
professionals and go on to create products, companies and
even entire industries. But beyond the anecdotes, can the
contributions of immigrants to America's industrial cutting
edge be quantified?
The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI) endeavored to
do this by using 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 over 19% of the patents in our sample
(48 patents) were issued to immigrants alone or to immigrants
collaborating with U.S.-born co-inventors. This is over twice
immigrants' proportion of the U.S. population--8.7%. \1\
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Footnotes at end of article.
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The immigrant inventors identified in our study include
researchers, executives, entrepreneurs and an MIT professor.
Four started their own businesses, generating over 1,600
jobs. Their innovations include: A system that protects
Americans troops inside a front-line combat vehicle from
chemical, biological and nuclear contamination; 100 sensors
used on the space shuttle, all produced by a company founded
by an immigrant inventor, now employing 1500 people;
components of GE electric power generators that are exported
to Japan; a machine made by a Montana company that generated
$10 million in sales last year, and is expected to generate
$15 million in sales to both U.S. and export markets this
year.
The economic contributions of immigrant inventors are worth
considering at a time when Congress is debating legislation
to reduce all categories of legal immigration, including
specially skilled workers. American high-tech firms rely on
skilled foreign workers to meet particular needs. For
example, Microsoft software developers are about 95% U.S.-
born, yet the company finds it ``absolutely essential'' to
draw on the technical and cultural knowledge that foreign-
born employees can bring, according to Microsoft Chairman
Bill Gates. New restrictions on the entry of skilled foreign
workers or their families ``will really put pressure on us to
do a major portion of our software development outside the
United States,'' Gates says.\2\ A U.S.-born inventor
contacted in this study said immigrants are a ``very valuable
asset for American science and technology. . . . You need a
constant influx of new ideas and new points of view.'' \3\
Our findings seem to justify concerns long expressed by
foreign governments about the ``brain drain''--the economic
loss they suffer when highly skilled citizens emigrate to
pursue careers overseas. For example, nearly 2,000
professional or semi-professional South African citizens
emigrated in 1994. As a result, some South Africans are
concerned that emigration means fewer jobs, a smaller
tax base and zero return on the state's investment in
educating physicians and other professionals. ``For every
emigrant--they are mostly highly qualified--at least ten
local people lose their jobs,'' said Karen Theron of South
Africa's Central Economics Advisory Services.\4\
immigrant inventors' stories
As immigrant inventors were identified in the study, the
author conducted interviews with many of them. They described
their work and their motivations for coming to America, and
offered some thoughts as to why the United States attracts
inventive people and why they are productive in the U.S. work
environment. Some of the information gathered in those
interviews follows: The inventors' patent numbers are noted
in parentheses.
Fred Kavli is Chairman of the Board and CEO of the Kavlico
Corporation in Moore Park, California. Kavli immigrated from
Norway in 1956 with a physics degree in hand, and founded the
company on a shoestring two years later. ``This was the land
of opportunity--especially then,'' he told us. ``There was no
other country I could go to to do that.''
Kavlico makes sensors, primarily for aeronautical controls
and automotive pollution controls. One hundred Kavlico
sensors operate on the space shuttle.
Kyong Park is Kavlico's Vice President for Research and
Development. A physicist, he came to the U.S. from Korea in
1969 to pursue his education. Park joined Kavlico in 1977 and
holds 24 patents.
With Kavli's assistance, Park was able to stay in the
United States to pursue his career. He preferred to stay here
because Korea was under a ``corrupt'' military government in
the 1970's, where bribery was rife and ``only people with
connections had opportunity,'' he said. ``Here, if you work
hard you have opportunity. People from outside really
appreciate this society and this culture.''
According to Kavli, Kyong Park was ``instrumental'' in the
pressure sensor development that brought Kavlico into the
automotive pollution control market. This has helped to
propel Kavlico's growth from $4 million in sales and 120
employees in 1977 to $150 million in sales and 1,500
employees today.
Park was reticent to be interviewed, explaining that he
does not seek special recognition for his work. But he did
describe an experience at a recent company picnic. A
colleague pointed to the 3,000 employees and family members
and told Park, ``See, all these people are making a living
because of your hard work.'' ``I never thought of it that
way,'' Park said. ``I felt good that I have helped not just
my family, but many of those people too.'' (Kavli/Park joint
patent 1988/4735098)
Ram Labhaya Malik of San Jose, California immigrated from
India in 1971. An engineer, he is co-inventor of an air
purification system now in use in the Army's Bradley Fighting
Vehicle, a front-line troop carrier. The system protects
personnel inside from nuclear, chemical and biological
contamination. One of his co-inventors immigrated from the
Netherlands, the other is U.S.-born. (1988/4793832)
Richard Baker is founder and president of Membrane
Technologies of Menlo Park, California. A native of the
United Kingdom, he came to the U.S. to pursue post-doctoral
studies, was offered a job and immigrated in 1966. He holds a
Ph.D. in chemistry and has 57 patents. His company employs 30
people. Membrane Technologies produces and sells air
purification systems and conducts scientific research under
government contract. (1944/5364629)
Aleksander Owczarz is a mechanical engineer at Semitool
Inc., a Kalispell, Montana company that makes capital
equipment for the semiconductor industry. Dissatisfied with
the system in Poland (``It was not my cup of tea''), he
emigrated in 1978 to seek new opportunity in the United
States. He stopped counting his patents when his 25th was
issued. His latest patent is for a precision cleaning machine
for wafer boxes and wafer carriers. Over 20 Semitool
employees work full-time manufacturing that machine. It is
sold in the U.S., Europe and Asia; sales were $10 million in
1995 and are projected to grow to $15 million this year.
``It's not just bright people'' that lead to technological
innovation, he said. ``The combination of bright individuals
and the right environment is what makes people productive
here.'' (1944/5357991)
Ernest Blanco immigrated from Cuba in 1960 and teaches
engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He
holds thirteen patents. In our sample, we found a design for
a flexible arm for medical endoscopes (diagnostic and
surgical devices) that he and a student created for Johnson &
Johnson. Discussing the propensity of immigrants to work hard
in scientific and technological research, he said, ``It's the
environment here and the way we immigrants thing about the
United States as a land where great inventions are being
made. Immigrants feel the way to break the economic barrier
is to invent something that will be of use to large numbers
of Americans. We become worthy by using our brains.'' (1994/
5348259)
Anatoly Galperin, an engineer, came to the U.S. as a
refugee from Russia in 1989. He works for the Miller Edge
company in Concordville, Pennsylvania. In Russia, he worked
in telecommunications; here, his field is sensors, including
the invention found in our sample: a safety feature
(``sensing Edge'') of mechanical doors sold throughout the
U.S. and to some overseas customers. (1994/5299387)
Michael Pryor of Woodbridge, Connecticut immigrated from
England in 1953 with a doctorate in metallurgy. He holds 130
U.S. patents, and become vice President for Metals
[[Page S2253]]
Research at the Olin Corporation in 1973. He is now retired.
At Olin, he calculated that the research department he
directed produced a three-to-one monetary return. Its
innovations include alloys, manufacturing processes, and the
process used to produce the metal composites needed to mint
quarters and dimes ever since the 90 percent silver-10
percent copper blend was discontinued. Pryor recruited both
U.S.-born and immigrant scientists for his labs, and
expressed particular admiration for Indian and Asian
metallurgists. ``I didn't hire immigrants because I wanted
to,'' he said, ``there were just not enough U.S. citizens
graduating to fill up the ranks--there was too much
competition from other labs and universities.'' (1988/
4781050)
Angela Michaels of Elkhart, Indiana is a chemist who works
for the Bayer Corporation. She immigrated from Italy in 1962.
She holds six patents; all are in use in Bayer's products,
including ``dip and read'' urinalysis strips for kidney
disease detection. (1988/4717658)
Sung Kwon of Burnsville, Minnesota was among many investors
drawn to the United States for educational opportunity. After
completing his undergraduate work at the best university of
Korea, he came to the University of Minnesota in 1965 to
pursue the advanced engineering studies that was ``not
available in Korea.'' He is now employed at Thermo King
Corporation (a Westinghouse division) and holds seven US
patents. (1994/5288643)
Jacob Haller and his family immigrated to the United States
from the former Yugoslavia in 1955. An engineer, he founded
the Emconn Tool company of Wheeling, Illinois and holds six
patents. Emconn makes equipment for the electrical connector
industry; its customers are the major telecommunications
companies. After building the company up to 20 employees,
Haller sold the manufacturing operation and now works with
one other employee developing new products. (1988/4718167)
David Lomas of Arlington Heights, Indiana is a chemical
engineer with the UOP corporation. He came to the United
States from England in 1973. He holds over 30 patents; the
invention in our sample is a ``catalytic cracking'' process
used in petroleum refining. (1988/4757039)
Mohamed Hashem, a chemist, is an Egyptian-born immigrant
working for the Rhone-Poulenc corporation's unit in Cranbury,
NJ. He holds about two dozen patents, several of which are in
commercial use, principally polymers for paints and coatings.
(1988/4760152)
Ian Crawford, an electrical engineer from Scotland, was
offered a job in the U.S. while here on a sales trip in 1980.
Dissatisfied with the opportunities before him in Scotland,
he took the job, came to the United States and went on to
found his own company. Analog Modules of Orlando, Florida now
employs over 60 people in the design, development and
manufacture of laser electronics. (1994/5311353)
Mitchell Budniak of Skokie, Illinois is an electrical
engineer who holds six patents. He and his parents were taken
from the native Poland to Germany during World War II where,
he said, his parents ``were basically slave labor.'' When the
war ended, Budniak was eleven years old, and they came to the
United States. His patents including a blood analysis unit
and a computerized unit that monitors the vital signs of at-
home patients and dispenses medication. (1988/4740080)
The late Stephen Slovenkai of Leominster, Massachusetts had
a 30-year chemical engineering career, including a patent for
a polymer fabrication method. In 1940 at age 14, he came to
the United States from the former Czechoslovakia. His family
settled in northeastern Pennsylvania, where his father worked
as a coal miner and he graduated first in his high school
class. He joined the U.S. Army and served in the postwar
occupation forces in Italy. (1988/4730027)
Ranjit Gill of Schenectady, New York is an engineer who
immigrated from India in 1970. The invention we encountered
in our study is a cooling system that his employer, GE, has
put to use in the world's largest electrical power
generators, which are exported to Japan. (1994/5374866)
Dodd Wing Fong of Naperville, Illinois is a chemist who
came to the United States from Hong Kong in 1962 to attend
graduate school. He holds over 70 patents; the one
encountered in our study is a polymer used in water
purification. (1988/4731419)
survey results
Sample size: 250.
Patents issued to immigrant inventors: 48.
Patents issued to U.S.-born inventors: 134.
No response: 68.
Patents issued to immigrants, as percentage of total sample
(48/250): 19.2 percent.
Patents issued to immigrants, as percentage of respondents
(48/180): 26.4 percent.
Foreign-born percentage of U.S. population: 8.7 percent.
how this study was conducted
Sample. This study was performed by contacting inventors
whose inventions resulted in U.S. patents issued in 1988 and
1994. To generate a random sample of 250 patents approved in
1988 and 1994, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution created
a random list of patent numbers from those years, and drew
our sample from that list.\5\ This process generated patents
issued to both U.S. and foreign inventors. Excluding the
patents issued to inventors living overseas, we were left
with a sample of 122 1988 patents and 128 1994 patents. The
years 1988 and 1994 were chosen to yield a sample including
both very recent patents and patents that might have been
used in commercial applications.
Canvassing. Using the home addresses in the patent
applications, we attempted to reach these inventors by phone
and/or letter. When we could not reach an inventor by mail or
telephone, or through a representative such as a patent
attorney, that patent was listed as ``no response.'' The
canvassing took place between January 15 and March 4, 1996.
Margin of error. This survey's margin of error is 4.9% at a
95% confidence level. That is, there is 95% likelihood that
identical surveys will yield results within a range 4.9
percentage points higher or lower than the result found here
(19.2%, or 48 immigrant inventors/250 patents). Because we
effectively counted as non-immigrants those inventors who did
not respond or could not be reached, our finding of 19.2%
immigrant inventors is probably conservative.
footnotes
1. 1994 foreign-born population as a percentage of total U.S.
population, based on the Census Bureau's Current Population
Survey.
2. Bill Gates, ``A World of Talent Out There,'' The Buffalo
News, January 2, 1996, p. E7.
3. Author's interview with inventor Andrew Olah of Spencer,
Ohio, February 13, 1996.
4. Johan Coetzee, ``Emigration Costs Country 10,000 Jobs
Yearly,'' Johannesburg BEELD, December 1, 1995, p. S2.
5. We generated the list using a Lotus spreadsheet, using the
formula P=(RN)+L, where P is the patent number, R is a random
number between 0 and 1, N is the number of patents issued in
the year (1988 or 1994) and L is the lowest patent number
issued in that year. Patent numbers are assigned
consecutively and sequentially.
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