U.S. Immigration Policy Helped Grow India's Economy, Says Study

United States immigration policies helped grow India’s economy, a new, academic study claims.

In a new study by the University of California, San Diego and the University of Michigan, states that the H-1B visa has led to an Indian economic boom.

Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa. Most recently, that number has ballooned to potentially hundreds of thousands each year, as universities and non-profits are exempt from the cap. With more entering the U.S. through the visa, Americans are often replaced.

As the Center for Immigration Studies noted, the vast majority of H-1B visas allotted every year are given to foreign nationals from India who primarily enter the IT sector.

In the academic study, researchers found that current policy aided India’s tech boom so much, that the country eventually surpassed the U.S. in IT exports.

“Those who could not join the US workforce, due to the H-1B cap, remained in India, enabling the growth of an Indian IT sector,” the researchers wrote. “Those who returned with acquired human capital and technology after the expiration of their H-1Bs also contributed to the growing tech-workforce in India. The increase in IT sector productivity allowed India to eventually surpass the US in IT exports.”

Researcher Gaurav Khanna told Quartz that without the U.S. immigration policies of the last four decades, where more than one million legal immigrants enter every year, India would have never been able to beat the U.S. in software exports.

“If US immigration had been restricted in the 1990s, it would not have allowed the Indian IT sector to develop,” Khanna said.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.