Essential Imports: How Immigration Reforms Can Help Counter China.

• Author: Carberry, Sean

China's growing might and control over critical supply chains has prompted the United States to invest billions into "reshoring" the manufacturing of semiconductors and defense-related technologies.

To fill new high-tech jobs that investment will create, the United States must reform cumbersome immigration policies to bring in skilled foreign talent--it's a matter of national security, according to defense, immigration and congressional experts.

The $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 is projected to create 30,000 to 100,000 jobs, according to analyses by academic, industry and research organizations. Even with recent layoffs in the tech sector, there isn't a standing supply of U.S. workers ready to jump into new semiconductor or defense manufacturing jobs, analysts say.

"We see that there's a huge labor crunch," said Jeremy Neufeld, a senior immigration fellow at the Institute for Progress. "Something like 80 percent of firms within the defense industrial base are reporting having a hard time filling job vacancies as it is." And the shortage is more pronounced for sectors like semiconductors where much of the expertise is outside the United States, he added.

Neufeld and other experts say the United States needs to continue developing the domestic talent pool and get more Americans into science, technology, engineering and math fields, but that's a longer-term endeavor that will take years to pay off.

"If we want to be serious about developing a workforce that can compete with China, we need to use whatever is in our toolbox," Neufeld said. "I think both the immigration lever and the domestic training lever shouldn't be thought of as totally separate, but they actually reinforce one another."

That's because building up industries like semiconductor manufacturing in the United States requires instruction and mentorship from the Taiwanese and South Koreans who are the leaders in the field, be said.

And to fill workforce gaps in the short run, the United States needs to tap more deeply into the global supply of high-skilled workers, he said.

"We've passed the CHIPS Act. We're increasing our defense spending," said Charles Wessner, who teaches global innovation policy at Georgetown and serves as an advisor to the Renewing American Innovation Program at the Center for Security and International Studies.

"We recognize the existential threat that China is posing to a rules-based system and to potentially our own safety. And we won't bring...