America’s Greatest Strength
As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, many of us seem to have forgotten a primary reason for America’s great success. In 250 years, our country became the world’s political, economic, and technological leader and the preeminent military, democratic, and moral force. This collective amnesia comes at a time of rising global competition, burgeoning multipolarity, and declining respect for our country in many parts of the world.
This competition we face today was on full display during the reception for President Donald Trump’s May State Visit to Beijing, China’s remarkable infrastructure and architectural achievements televised for the world to see, and broad reporting of China’s dramatic technological advances (from human-like robots, to EVs, to solar panels, to widespread use of AI) revived a recurring multi-year debate among international observers and some Americans as well: is America in decline while is China on the rise? Numerous Chinese leaders reinforced this narrative.
Yet the narrative may be overstated. While China is certainly on a spectacular rise, that does not necessarily portend America’s decline. History is full of two or more countries thriving together at the same time. The 19th-century Concert of Europe saw the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia all grow. After WWII, both Germany and Japan rebounded. And in recent decades, countries such as South Korea, Singapore, the UAE, Malaysia, and India have all risen.
For their part, many U.S. leaders have rejected this dark story of decline. But as several surveys have consistently indicated, optimism about our country’s outlook has undeniably weakened. Stridently polarized and partisan American political discourse, attacks on our educational system and advanced research programs, major fragmentation in our alliances, a decline in confidence in government institutions over the years, the undermining of efforts to narrow socio-economic inequity, frequent federal shutdowns, mushrooming national debt, and a deteriorating sense of community all feed into a negative perception of America’s future.
The facts, however, paint a more upbeat picture. America’s remarkable technological prowess, prodigious military capabilities, wide range of underlying economic strengths, history of resilience, and entrepreneurial spirit remain pillars of progress and reasons for optimism. Thus, while doubts about America’s future have grown significantly, it is far too early to come to any sweeping long-term conclusions about American decline.
Of course, an open discussion of the formidable domestic divisions, problems, and challenges we face is nonetheless warranted as we contemplate the next several decades. Many fundamental changes are necessary to strengthen the outlook for the U.S. One frequently overlooked but essential aspect of America’s past strength, now under severe domestic stress and the target of harmful policy threats, is our historic attractiveness and openness to bright, talented, and hardworking people from around the world.
Decade after decade, these immigrants have come to the U.S. from all parts of the world and have helped build our country and our democracy. This is, and has always been, one of America’s greatest strengths—and it will be essential to underpin America’s success for many decades to come.
America’s ability to attract
Roughly two decades ago, the debate over America’s decline drew a lot of attention after the traumas and failures of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the 2008 financial crisis. At around this time, I visited Singapore and had the opportunity to visit with Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, in my view, one of the wisest and most thoughtful figures of the 20th Century.
Lee’s remarkable leadership took Singapore from a small fishing island to the astounding economic and technological success it is today. He was also a great admirer and a highly perceptive Tocquevillian-type observer of the U.S.
I asked Lee if he thought the U.S. was in decline. His answer was emphatic, succinct, and declarative. “No.”
I then asked how he arrived at this conclusion. He responded that it was not because of America’s strong military or its world-leading economy and technology. It was America’s ability to attract “the best, brightest, most productive, most ambitious and hardest working people from around the world.” He wasn’t just referring to highly educated scientists and entrepreneurs, although these were at the top of his list, but also to everyday people with other skills and a commitment to hard work, trying to make a better life for their families and contribute to American society. That ability to attract such people and a welcoming environment for immigrants seeking to become productive U.S. citizens, he emphasized, has been an important American strategic and economic asset, and source of dynamism, for well over 200 years.
Lee added that China had brilliant scientists, outstanding researchers, excellent engineers, and highly productive workers, all on or near par with the U.S. But it did not have a history of attracting large numbers of skilled and talented people from other nations, which put it at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the U.S.
As we continued our conversation, however, he said that his confidence in America’s future could be quickly altered if it were to cease being attractive and welcoming to foreign talent. Equally, China’s disadvantage in this area could be overcome if it became more open to foreign talent in its schools, research centers, and advanced industries.
Preserving America’s greatest strength
Looking to the future, Lee’s wise words on these issues need to be revisited today. In numerous areas, the U.S., while successfully curbing the flow of undocumented immigration, has taken harsh actions to significantly discourage the inflow of legal immigration, including many of the “best and brightest” that Lee was referring to. Various policies have made it extremely difficult for immigrants pursuing legal procedures to enter this country and stay here to work, establish and build world-class technology companies, and become productive members of their communities. Greater difficulties and high levels of uncertainty in obtaining H1-B visas have been cited by many highly talented potential and current immigrants I have spoken to as significant impediments.
Now, new regulations could make it far more onerous, if not impossible, for hundreds of thousands of people already here—and faithfully engaging in the legal process to obtain Green Cards—to remain, work, raise families, build companies, become successful entrepreneurs, and thrive in their communities.
One argument for such impediments is that restricting access to the U.S. makes it easier for native born Americans to get jobs. This is not a new narrative, nor particular to the U.S., but there is scant evidence that this is true. Studies show that skilled foreign-born workers complement, and frequently create large numbers of new jobs for, American-born workers.
Some of America’s largest and most prolific employers were founded by first and second-generation Americans. Nvidia and Google are good examples of this, but there are many more immigrant-founded small businesses that employ millions of American workers.
This is not to say that American workers don’t face challenges. Technological advancements in fields like AI have made it clear that major improvements in how we train Americans with the skills needed to secure jobs in today’s and tomorrow’s economy are vitally important. Many schools at all levels of our education system are failing to produce large numbers of graduates with work-ready skills.
But numerous studies have demonstrated that a smooth and legal inflow of skilled immigrants does not deprive Americans of such jobs. On the other hand, massive reductions in the number of incoming immigrants do not increase such jobs.
History has taught us this lesson before. In the early 1920s, Congress passed legislation to reduce European immigration by 80%. Afterward, there was no measurable increase in jobs or wages for native born Americans. And when the U.S. ended the Bracero Program, which had attracted millions of agricultural workers from Mexico in 1964, there was no subsequent reciprocal increase in jobs for native-born Americans.
On the other side of the equation, in 1980, Fidel Castro opened the port of Mariel to allow 125,000 Cubans to flee to the U.S. Most settled in the Miami area. David Card, who won a Nobel Prize in 2021 for his work on this subject, documented that this inflow actually prompted a significant increase in new business investment and thus led to a surge in new employment.
To be sure, some job displacement does take place from immigration, even fully documented immigration, in some communities. But the solution is one that would benefit all of society. Enhanced training and financial support for reskilling can help American workers find new jobs and help the American economy adapt to new technological advancements. There are too few programs and insufficient resources available to do this. But any displacement by immigrants is limited and often dwarfed, as Card’s research found, by job increases from new or expanding businesses that immigrants generate. And many of the best and brightest scientists and researchers spurned by America are going to other countries and are hired by businesses abroad that compete with our own—including, as Lee anticipated, China.
Most of China’s technology industry is now homegrown, but many of the country’s companies and advanced research projects have benefited from highly talented researchers and entrepreneurs who studied here but could not obtain permits to remain and work for American companies, so returned to China. Go to various labs, medical and technology research centers, and high-tech companies in China, as I have often done, and you will find many speaking American English. In some high-tech communities, you will also see more than a few Yale, MIT, and Harvard sweatshirts.
America, for the first time in nearly a century, faces in China a peer military, economic, technological, and geopolitical competitor—in scale and skill. When you look closely at this competition, you quickly find that one key component of China’s success in competing has been its ability to augment an already highly skilled and talented workforce with the top talent from around the world.
But as much as China has improved in the race to attract the world’s best and brightest, and as much as the U.S. has recently stumbled in this regard, America still has a big head start.
This lead goes back even before we became a nation 250 years ago, to immigrants like Alexander Hamilton, who created our remarkably successful financial system. America’s 13 original colonies were teeming with adventurous foreigners who formed the bedrock of our dynamic economy and democracy.
Failing to recognize the benefits to our country of this capability to attract and retain talented immigrants—and destroying or severely weakening the rules that allow such people to come here legally, and through welcoming procedures and regulations—is a deeply harmful, long-lasting, self-inflicted wound.
If Lee were alive today and observed the growing, harsh barriers our policies are imposing on skilled, high-quality immigration, he might come to a very different, and less optimistic, conclusion about America’s future than he did a few decades ago.
The question Americans must ask now is: If others see immigration as our greatest strength, why can’t we see it ourselves?
