Each year that passes without a comprehensive look at how immigration policy shapes the country’s capacity for technological growth is a year of compounding uncertainty for the companies, researchers, and workers who depend on the outcome. On January 22, 2026, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University moved to close that gap — hosting its second annual Immigration Policy and the Economics of Innovation conference, made possible through the financial backing of JP Conte, managing partner of a San Francisco-based private equity firm and a member of Hoover’s Board of Overseers.
The event drew academic economists, founders, policy practitioners, and venture investors to the Stanford campus to examine what the research actually says about high-skill immigration — stripping away talking points in favor of hard data. Three new papers were presented, each offering distinct findings on how the movement of skilled workers across borders affects trade, company formation, and innovation output in the United States and abroad.
What the Research Found
The papers covered a wide range of economic territory. One study, conducted by researchers from the University of Chicago and the Bank of Canada, traced the effects of tighter US work-visa rules beginning in 2017, finding that higher denial rates pushed skilled workers who might otherwise have come to the US toward jobs in Canada — with secondary effects that boosted Canadian exports. Another paper, from economists at the University of California at San Diego, documented how surging American demand for foreign tech workers in the mid-1990s catalyzed a computer science education boom in India, ultimately creating a software export industry there that now surpasses US output in scale.
A third study, from the University of California at Davis, found that American graduate students who study alongside international classmates are measurably more likely to start or co-found companies after graduation. The aggregate message from all three papers was consistent: the presence of highly skilled immigrants and international students generates spillover benefits that extend well beyond the individuals themselves.
JP Conte on Why the Work Matters
JP Conte, whose initiative at Hoover funds and organizes the conference series, opened his remarks by asking attendees to consider what Silicon Valley would look like had prominent founders who immigrated to the United States never been permitted entry. “Just think of a scenario where none of those people were here,” he said. He then stated what he sees as the central insight the initiative exists to document: “The beauty of America is immigration and innovation. And immigration is key to that innovation.”
The conference was attended by an audience of researchers, practitioners, and industry figures, and included an afternoon panel with investors, legal experts, and founders who spoke to the practical realities of operating in the current immigration environment. Two million active high-skill visas currently exist across the US workforce — a number that underscores both the depth of the country’s reliance on foreign-born talent and the scope of what is at stake if access to those workers becomes more constrained.
Read: Hoover Conference Demonstrates How High-Skill Immigration Offers Range of Benefits for US Innovation