Immigration Is a Team Sport

College football, amidst a rebirth this season because of a handful of major changes in the competitive landscape, has surprising lessons for America’s immigration policy. Here’s the question newly elected politicians should be asking as they watch the Buckeyes vs Wolverines matchup later this month: What kind of an idiot coach would say no to players from the other team who want to join his roster?

The new college football playoff structure will be open to the top 12 teams, not just the top four like in previous years. An even bigger change is the rule allowing players to be paid for their “name, image, and likeness,” which has rebalanced the financial rewards to star players and also opened up a profound market for athletes who transfer. For example, Ohio State quarterback Will Howard suited up for Kansas State Wildcats last season but is now leading the Buckeyes to the odds-on favorite to win the national championship after his transfer a few months ago. Howard is working with an array of talented receivers like Jeremiah Smith, and Quinshon Judkins, a dominant running back who transferred from Ole Miss. The only problem is that the offensive line is suffering from injuries. The Buckeyes need a new left tackle. Would it be fair if a five-star tackle from Michigan joined the team before the playoffs began?

Let’s consider that question in a different context: Would it be fair if the top 5,000 scientists in China defected to the United States?

The answer is: Who cares? When it comes to college football, maybe fairness matters. When it comes to national security, fairness is not a factor if you want America to win. To paraphrase Vince Lombardi, when it comes to immigration policy, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing!”

In the great competition among nations, there are no constraints on how many players can join the team. The 300 Spartans did not complain when they resisted thousands of Persians at the hot gates of Thermopylae. Indeed, the value of more inspired nations to form alliances, so when the United States defended South Korea in 1950, it did so with allied soldiers from over a dozen countries, including Canada, France, Australia, and the United Kingdom, as well as 20,000 troops from Turkey and more from Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, and even Ethiopia.

Look no further than Nazis for an example of how to lose on the immigration front. When hundreds of Jews left Germany, including 16 who had been awarded the Nobel Prize, Adolf Hitler declared, “If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years!”

It is your great fortune that U.S. policy has been the opposite. As the 2024 recipients gather in Stockholm in early December, all three winners of the Nobel Prize in economics will be American immigrants: one from Turkey and two from the United Kingdom. The Nobel committee takes care to note each recipient’s current home as well as their birth country. Of the 117 Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans in chemistry, medicine, and physics since 2000, 45 went to immigrants. Since 1960, nearly a hundred immigrants have won the “hard science” Nobels. Legal immigrants. In some years, such as 2016, the majority of people in the entire world recognized by the Nobel Committee were American immigrants.

Critics may lament that Republicans are anti-immigration, but the reality is that both Republicans and Democrats favor legal migration. International law allows the United States to recruit an unlimited number of talented foreigners to join our team. The only constraint comes from current U.S. law, in place for decades, which caps employment-based (EB) green cards at 140,000 each year, no matter how brilliant or educated the people are. This constraint applies to people who work in America, reside in America, pay taxes in America, and have college degrees from American universities. The EB-cap may be the stupidest anti-American law on the books, a law established by Congress to keep America weak on purpose.

No law capping migration was in place during the Civil War, and fortunately, Abraham Lincoln had the common sense to encourage immigration to the North. He was the first president in history to pass legislation to actively enhance and recruit foreigners, a policy that helped win the war to end slavery.

Today? Imagine if the best offensive lineman was a resident of Team China. Imagine that young man from Guangzhou wants to wear our team colors, protect our quarterback, and help America win. What are we doing keeping him not just on the bench, but on the other side’s starting line? China is trying to encourage immigration with active policies but they are failing because they cannot compete on this front. Why is America not taking advantage?