Information technology (IT) professionals play an important role in firms' IT investments, innovation, and entrepreneurship, contributing to significant economic growth in the U.S. The use of temporary work visas and related immigration policies has attracted a significant controversy and policy debates in the U.S. On the one hand, foreign IT professionals complement domestic IT professionals by facilitating innovation and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, the foreign IT professionals substitute the domestic counterparts by intensifying labor market competition. In this study, we focus on an extension in the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program for STEM graduates from U.S. institutions. Specifically, we explore the effects of the OPT extension on the number and wage of domestic workers in STEM occupations and how these effects differ between IT and non-IT STEM occupations. Our results demonstrate that an increase in the supply of foreign IT professionals from the OPT extension boosts the employment of domestic IT professionals. This study contributes to the information systems, labor economics, and public policy literature by quantifying the impacts of a policy change on the employment of IT professionals and provides rich implications for policymakers.

Prof. Min-Seok Pang is an Associate Professor of Management Information Systems and Milton F. Stauffer Research Fellow at Fox School of Business, Temple University. He serves as a senior editor of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) and an Associate Editor at MIS Quarterly. He has received a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and an M.S. in Management from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from University of Michigan. His research interests include strategic management of information technology in the public sector and technology-enabled public policies. His research has been published in Management Science, MIS Quarterly, and Information Systems Research. He received an AIS Best Information Systems Publication Award, a Best Published Paper Award from Information Systems Research, and an Outstanding Reviewer of the Year Award from MIS Quarterly. He teaches Information Technology Management for Fox MBA programs.