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Facing the ongoing debates of US immigration policy towards skilled workers, it is prominent to have a comprehensive understanding of the labor market quality of high-skilled immigrants. Using a sample of college graduates from 2003 and 2010 [National Survey of College Graduates] NSCG, [the author studies] the returns to human capital of high-skilled immigrants by entry visa. [Ordinary least-squares] OLS results show that high-skilled immigrants have a significantly low return to foreign human capital compared with the return to US human capital of natives. Other than this, there is no evidence that implies the quality of any visa group of high-skilled immigrants is worse than native workers and in some cases immigrants have an advantage in return to US human capital over native counterparts. [Science and engineering] immigrants show a slightly better quality, indicated by the relatively higher return to US human capital than the full sample. When the sample is split into visa groups, study visa group has a highest return to US human capital and green card group shows no evident disadvantage. The results are robust to alternative definitions and the incorporation of cohort effects.

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