US: Trump’s AI Aspirations Linked To Immigration?

The recent rise of Chinese Artificial Intelligence assistant DeepSeek became a reason for the US stock market’s stumble with tech stocks taking a dip. Donald Trump’s administration wants the US to become powerful in AI, but his aspiration and dream of AI seem to be linked to immigrants.

Trump’s previous rule was a nightmare for many immigrants due to the strict immigration policies leading to visa rejections of employees, and students among other things. According to a recent study, a majority of the US artificial intelligence workforce was either founded or cofounded by immigrants.

Immigrants have founded or cofounded nearly two-thirds of the top AI companies in the US and 70 percent of full-time graduate students in the fields related to AI are international students. Another report says, between 40% and 60% of AI-related master’s degrees have been awarded to non-US citizens in the last 5 years. For Ph.Ds this share has been more than 59% in 2022.

Due to immigration obstacles, graduates from US institutions are moving without contributing to the US workforce. The economists opine that a better immigration system would make it easier to retain talent.

‘It is the policy of the US to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security’, said the presidential executive order.