Many economists agree that immigration leads to a positive net impact on the U.S. economy, but restrictions on the number of employment-based visas and the costs of employer sponsorships are preventing businesses from hiring the workers they need across all skill levels. Particularly for high-skilled jobs, these limitations prevent U.S. companies from recruiting the best talent to stay competitive with other countries. In 2018, more than 190,000 people applied for just 85,000 available high-skill H-1B visas.

Many of these broken policies stem from misperceptions about how immigration affects native-born workers and the United States economy more broadly. Two commonly held beliefs are that immigrants take jobs from U.S. citizens and that immigrants push down wages for fellow workers. But the best available data say these realities are, simply put, untrue.