At the turn of the 21st century, Britain and Germany embarked on initiatives to overhaul, in the case of the former, and establish a formal immigration policy—a maneuver described as a paradigm shift by many, in the case of the latter. Among the noted goals of these policy agendas was to attract and increase the number of the best and the brightest. Both Berlin and London considered a similar policy instrument: the points system. The United States flirted with the policy innovation and even included it in its comprehensive immigration reform bill of 2007. Britain adopted the policy; however, although it was proposed by the SPD-Green government, the policy failed to be adopted in the Bundestag. Instead exceptions were made to the ban on recruiting migrant workers to accommodate the entry of high skilled migrants. The question is have these approaches worked? Was the points system more effective at attracting global talent? Does the policy instrument matter in the pursuit of high skilled immigrant labor? I argue that while policy instruments may explicitly signal to migrants that they are welcome--some policies such as the point system, do this more explicitly--the environment in the destination is more important. Using a mixed methods approach, this paper is a comparative analysis of high skilled migration to Britain, Germany, and the United States. It examines the effectiveness of immigration policies of these destinations to achieve their intended goals and seeks to explain these policy outcomes over the period 2000-2010, pre- and post-policy initiatives and the Great Recession.
