Trump’s Immigration Policies May Threaten American AI Leadership

In this piece for TechTank, authors Judy Wang & Nicole Turner Lee discuss how former campaign promises by President Donald Trump to liberalize immigration for AI talent have shifted in his second term. While Trump previously pledged to grant automatic green cards to international graduates from U.S. universities, his recent executive order on AI leadership omits any mention of loosening immigration restrictions. Instead, the order focuses on removing “barriers to American leadership in artificial intelligence” and directs the creation of an AI Action Plan, while repealing President Biden’s earlier order that explicitly prioritized attracting global AI talent.

The authors note that major tech figures—many themselves first-generation immigrants—have long pushed for more open visa policies to secure top global talent. High-profile leaders such as Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, and Aravind Srinivas highlight the role of immigrant entrepreneurs in the U.S. AI sector. Data from the National Foundation for American Policy shows that 77% of leading U.S. AI companies were founded or co-founded by first- or second-generation immigrants, and over half of U.S. billion-dollar startups have immigrant founders, many of them in AI and related technologies.

International students are a particularly critical part of the AI pipeline. Forty-two percent of top U.S.-based AI companies were founded by individuals who originally came to the U.S. as international students, reflecting the fact that foreign students make up 70% of full-time graduate enrollments in AI-related fields. Indian and Chinese founders, in particular, have made substantial contributions—founding nine and eight of the top 48 AI companies, respectively…

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