Heartland Visas: Good policy for small colleges and the communities they serve

I’ve argued recently that independent schools and colleges need to be much more engaged in public policy, both by joining education policy debates and by supporting policies that strengthen the communities they serve.

The Economic Innovation Group? (EIG) just published a report advocating for one such policy: Heartland Visas.? EIG argues that by making more visas available to highly skilled immigrants who will locate in counties “experiencing economic decline or stagnation,” the US could expand economic innovation beyond the coastal metropolitan areas (and the few internal cities like Austin, Chicago, and Salt Lake City) where it is generally located.? The Heartland Visa program would increase the number of visas available to “highly skilled workers, entrepreneurs, and innovators,” link those visas to a willingness to live and work in struggling counties and provide a pathway to permanent residency for those visa holders.? (Read the whole report here.)

So how would this policy benefit independent schools and colleges?? First, many independent colleges are located in the counties that would be eligible for Heartland Visas. Improving economies and broader innovation in those counties make education in those places more desirable and augment the colleges' own economic and civic development work. Second, the proposal explicitly calls for making such visas available to recent graduates of colleges and universities located in those counties, thereby helping recently graduated international students stay in the places where they’ve studied.? Third, as immigrants have a slightly higher birth rate than the national average, the presence of more highly skilled immigrants in stagnant communities also helps them respond to the “demographic cliff” in the long term.? Finally, getting behind the Heartland Visa program is a way for struggling colleges and their struggling communities to support each other, and by doing so, find a pathway to future well-being.