According to newly released data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), more foreign-born workers in science, technology, engineering, and math — the so-called STEM fields — are receiving green cards that give them the right to live and work permanently in the United States.

This information comes from a recent article in the December issue of Science magazine.

The story reports that the Citizenship and Immigration Service in January 2022 tweaked its guidance criteria relating to two visa categories available to STEM workers.

One is the O-1A, a temporary visa for “aliens of extraordinary ability” that often paves the way to a green card.

The second, which bestows a green card on those with advanced STEM degrees, governs a subset of an EB-2 (employment-based) visa.

The data shows that the number of O-1A visas awarded in the first year of the revised guidance jumped by almost 30%, to 4,570, and held steady in fiscal year 2023 ending in September.

Similarly, the number of STEM EB-2 visas approved in 2022 after a “national interest” waiver shot up by 55% over 2021, to 70,240, and stayed at that level this year.

Silicon Valley immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn predicts the policy changes will result in “new technology startups that would not have otherwise been created.”

President Joe Biden has long sought to make it easier for foreign-born STEM workers to remain in the country and use their talent to spur the U.S. economy.

But under the terms of a 1990 law, only 140,000 employment-based green cards may be issued annually, and no more than 7% of those can go to citizens of any single country.

That ceiling is well below demand. And the country quotas have created decades-long queues for scientists and high-tech entrepreneurs born in India and China.

But for a small country such as Ireland, all this points to another avenue for Irish citizens to emigrate to the United States. The 7% cap would allow up to 9,800 Irish STEM workers and entrepreneurs to emigrate annually.