The American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000 (AC21) eliminated the H-1B cap for foreign employees of academic, nonprofit and government research organizations. This act potentially affects the job preferences of newly graduated foreign Ph.D. students. Choosing a career in an uncapped H-1B-qualified entity means circumventing the risk of facing the fiercely competitive H-1B application process and possibly avoiding potential losses due to a visa rejection. We use data from the census of Ph.D. graduates to examine the causal effect of this policy change on academic and industry labor markets in the USA. We find that as a result of this policy, Ph.D. graduates with temporary visas are 5 percentage points more likely to pursue a job in academia, and 3–4 percentage points less likely to choose a job in industry. A series of robustness checks exclude other external factors around the same time period driving the results.

中文翻译：

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H-1B上限豁免对博士的影响 劳动力市场

2000年的《二十一世纪美国竞争法》（AC21）取消了学术机构，非营利组织和政府研究机构的外国雇员的H-1B上限。该行为可能会影响到刚毕业的外国博士学位的工作偏好。学生们。在没有上限的H-1B资格实体中选择职业意味着避免面对激烈竞争的H-1B申请流程的风险，并可能避免因签证被拒而造成的潜在损失。我们使用来自博士学位普查的数据。毕业生以研究此政策变更对美国学术和行业劳动力市场的因果关系。我们发现，由于这项政策，博士。持有临时签证的毕业生在学术界工作的可能性要高5个百分点，而在工业界工作的可能性要低3-4个百分点。