The US has the most immigrant inventors in the world, according to research

Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order which would temporarily ban refugees and immigrants from certain countries, from entering the US.

The president will be restricting access to refugees, immigrants and even visa holders from Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

However, in doing so, he may be depriving the country of important innovators.

Research into global talent flows found that more high-skilled immigrant workers migrated to the US between 2000 and 2010, than in all the other countries combined.

Many of these were scientific, or otherwise innovative individuals - whose expertise contributed not only to the country’s economy, but also its knowledge.

Researcher Sari Pekkala Kerr, of the Wellesley Centres for Women, and her team defined an inventor as someone who had filed a patent with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) database.

The US has 194,6000 immigrants with patents, more than all the other countries surveyed. The next largest patent-holders are in Germany, with 25,300 – a small number in comparison.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, in 2014, 10.5 million immigrants had a university degree or higher, representing approximately 29 per cent of the total US foreign-born population aged 25 and over.

Many of these skilled workers enter the US either through a temporary work visa, or university sponsorships. However, in Friday’s speech, Trump said he would “Follow two simple rules: buy American, hire American”, and his intentions could change the landscape for foreign skilled workers in the US.

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