When it comes to immigration, America too often debates emotion instead of economics. But what if immigration reform wasn’t about politics — and was instead about efficiency, growth, and fiscal impact?
That’s exactly the perspective Daniel Di Martino brings to the conversation. A fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Ph.D. candidate in economics at Columbia University, Di Martino joined Breaking Battlegrounds to discuss his new report, The Fiscal Impact of Immigration. His findings point toward a simple truth: America’s immigration system is costing us billions by mismanaging talent and opportunity.
The Problem with the H-1B Lottery
The H-1B visa is the main pathway for highly skilled workers — engineers, scientists, and tech professionals — to come to the U.S. through employer sponsorship. Each year, 85,000 of these visas are available for private companies. But because demand far outpaces supply, who gets one is decided by a lottery.
“Only about 25 percent of applicants are selected,” Di Martino explained. “You have companies offering $300,000 salaries competing equally against offers for $60,000 — and both have the same odds. That’s economically irrational.”
Instead of chance deciding, Di Martino argues the U.S. should rank visa applicants by wage, giving priority to those whose skills and salaries create the greatest economic value.
“It’s simple,” he said. “You get more bang for your visa buck.”
The $100,000 Fee Proposal Misses the Point
Former President Donald Trump recently floated the idea of charging companies a $100,000 fee per H-1B visa — a move Di Martino says would backfire.
“It’s a big hammer for a small nail,” he said. “It doesn’t solve the underlying problem, which is how visas are allocated. Worse, it would hit universities, hospitals, and research institutions — organizations that rely on these visas to bring in doctors and scientists.”
In other words, the fee would generate headlines, not solutions — and could even reduce government revenue in the long run by stifling innovation and cutting off high-value workers.
Auctioning Green Cards for Investors
Di Martino also outlined a creative — and lucrative — reform idea for the EB-5 investor visa program, which allows foreign investors to earn a green card by investing at least $1 million and creating 10 U.S. jobs.
“The current process is a bureaucratic nightmare,” he said. “It can take five years just to review an application. That’s outrageous if we want to attract investors and create jobs.”
His solution? Auction the visas.
Rather than relying on slow government certification, Di Martino proposes auctioning the roughly 10,000 EB-5 green cards available each year.
“If investors are already willing to spend $1 million to qualify, they’d pay another $500,000 for the certainty and speed of an auction,” he said. “That could generate hundreds of millions in revenue for the U.S. — without raising taxes or adding red tape.”
And that’s not the only benefit. These investors would go on to create businesses, jobs, and tax revenue — multiplying their fiscal impact far beyond the auction fee.
A Smarter System That Pays for Itself
Sam Stone summed it up during the conversation: “Not only would the U.S. government bring in those auction fees, but it would also collect massive tax revenue from the businesses and employees those investors support.”
Chuck Warren agreed — these are the kind of “simple but powerful” reforms policymakers should be studying before casting their next immigration vote.
As Di Martino’s research shows, the right immigration policies don’t just bring people — they bring prosperity.
Transcript
Sam Stone: Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We’re continuing on now with Daniel Di Martino, fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a PhD candidate in economics at Columbia University. He has a fantastic report out. We highly encourage everyone to check it out, The Fiscal Impact of Immigration. It is frankly something that every policymaker in this country, Chuck, ought to be reading before they cast their next vote on this issue. So Daniel, thank you once again for joining us. We very much appreciate having you on the program.
**Daniel Di Martino: **Thank you. I’m enjoying it.
Chuck Warren: Daniel, so in your report, the fiscal impact of immigration, you’ve presented some points that we need to do. One is rank H-1B visas by wage. Explain to our audience what an H-1B visa is and what do you mean by separating it by wage?
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah, so it is the main path for immigrants who have college degrees to come to America sponsored by a company. The job has to be in an area that requires a degree and the employee needs to have a degree as well, usually a master’s degree, half of them do. So the problem now is that there’s 85,000 of those visas available for private companies and they are just giving a lottery because there are more companies wanting, there are more than 85,000 jobs being sought.
And the consequences that you have like a 25% selection chance only it’s like four times as many. So why would you give them randomly when there are people who make say $300,000 that are getting job offers and people who are having $60,000. You will rather have the person making much more money because they’re much more valuable for the American company.
Sam Stone: And that is an annual number, right? So every year that number is granted in H-1B visas.
**Daniel Di Martino: **That’s right. Yes and the visa is a good for three years can be extended to six and then the company can if they choose a sponsor them for permanent residency and then there’s all their whole other system for that.
Chuck Warren: What do you think, by the way, about Trump’s $100,000 fee for the H-1B visas?
Daniel Di Martino: I think it’s a bad, it’s like a big hammer for a small nail, let’s say. The issue with the fee is that it doesn’t solve the underlying problem, which is that we should just rank them by wage. And two, it will actually reduce the number of visas issued for the non-capped categories, which is universities, hospitals that bring in physicians, and also for research institutions.
So if you reduce the number of visas being issued, because these are highly paid professionals, this actually may cost the government money rather than raise it in the form of the fee.
**Chuck Warren: **All right, you also recommend that we auction investor visas. Explain that to our audience and what does that mean.
Daniel Di Martino: Yes so this is a very interesting program. You’re a multi-millionaire abroad that wants to invest at least a million dollars in America and create at least ten jobs you can get what’s called an EB5 five green card. The problem is that the process is so onerous for the government to certify your best net pay, that is your money, that you created the jobs. It takes atleast five years for the government to even review the application. That’s outrageous right? If you want to bring in millionaires to invest and create jobs here.
So instead of doing all of this and having all these government employees checking things, let’s just give out the nearly 10,000 green cards available in this category and just auction them. If you want a $100,000 fee, these people will pay even more for that because it’s not a temporary visa, it’s a green card. I estimate that the average investor would be willing to pay half a million dollars for it. Imagine if we could fundraise so many millions of dollars, hundreds of millions by just auctioning them and making the process simpler for investors.
**Sam Stone: **Well, but there would be the second tier effect. So first, the US government coffers would receive those those auction fees. But secondly, these folks are talking about would be generating enormous amounts of government tax income through their economic activity.
Chuck Warren: Correct.
**Daniel Di Martino: **That’s right even more than the people who come through it now because it would be the people who can pay the actual fee that is auctioned and it wouldn’t be an arbitrary amount that because you will be an auction it would be the market that set the amount.
Listen to the full episode of Breaking Battlegrounds anywhere you stream your podcasts!