Talent migration will be one of the most important policy and economic issues the U.S. and the world will face for decades to come, according to Harvard Business School’s William R. Kerr. Author of The Gift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy & Society, Kerr shared his insights on the current state of immigration policy and how it might look in the future at the first of the Lampert Institute for Civic and Global Affairs spring lectures on Feb. 10.
Kerr says the United States has been the largest beneficiary to date of the global migration of talent, but other countries are rapidly growing their own talent pools. This shift could challenge U.S. technological supremacy. Immigration has made the world as a whole better off, Kerr says, with individual migrants and certain employers receiving the largest benefit from the current U.S. system. But he notes others have lost jobs, leading many constituencies throughout the country to believe they don’t benefit from the system as it stands.
Kerr says one of the biggest issues facing most countries around the world is going to be dealing with much older and declining populations. Currently, the U.S. is the “best case scenario” among the advanced countries, with a relatively young population, even with slowing growth. Without immigration to keep the United States above the replacement rate, projections past 2040 show a population decline — a decline that is already happening in almost every European country and in Japan. Kerr anticipates an escalation in global competition as many countries try to attract the best talent.
There’s no other country with such diversity and the capacity to put so many people to work in a variety of environments, Kerr says, but investment will be needed to continue drawing the best workers to the United States.
“The thing I most want to emphasize for our future and the thing that scares me a lot about our current political environment is the thing that helps migrants the most — certainty,” Kerr says, adding that the system may not be user-friendly, but it must be predictable. “People don’t want to choose to go to school in a country where they’re looking into the labor market if they’re very uncertain that the labor market will be there when they come out.”
Lampert Institute Director and Professor of Economics Chad Sparber says he wanted to start off the spring lecture series with a focus on STEM policy, following the fall’s emphasis on elections, national security, and the global world order. “Bill Kerr is an expert on the role immigrants play in developing new technologies that promote economic growth,” Sparber says. “As the Trump administration considers tightening immigration rules, it is important for our students to understand some of the unintended consequences restrictions might generate.”
William R. Kerr is the D’Arbeloff Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, as well as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research, co-director of Harvard’s Managing the Future of Work initiative, and faculty chair of the Launching New Ventures program. He is also a recipient of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship and Harvard's Distinction in Teaching award.
The Lampert Institute's spring lecture series continues on March 5 with a conversation with Ambassador Kathleen Doherty ’85, the former U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus, who will discuss A Turbulent Triangle: Cyprus and NATO Allies Greece and Turkey. On April 8, Michael O’Hanlon and Vanda Felbab-Brown with the Brookings Institution will discuss Transnational Criminal Networks: A Nontraditional Threat to U.S. Security.