The revenue generated by Google, Chobani, and other companies is not "Mickey mouse" money. Not to mention that Microsoft and Google both picked immigrants to be their leaders.
Would that be the case if the US didn't have visa programs which select for high quality immigrants balancing out illegal immigration and visa programs which do not select for high quality immigrants?
Anecdotally, my first generation friends had parents who didn't come on study or skilled worker visas. They are all net contributors to society and many sacrificed a lot to get their kids into good private schools. They weren't upper middle class but still made it happen.
Besides, the US really doesn't have much of a safety net, so even if I wanted to live "on the dole" here I don't really know how that's possible. Closest I could think is TANF but even that gets cut off after a few years.
Social security disability is certainly one way. Having children is another way that will guarantee benefits for years. The US spends hundreds of billions each year on safety net programs. Someone is living off of it.
It would be very interesting to see how many people are lifetime net-spenders of tax money (not counting money paid as wages to government employees/contractors). I can't find any study that has tried to estimated that, but I would think that anyone who spent a few non-retirement years on safety net programs or in prison and whose income never went above the 50th percentile would probably be in that category.
Changing the numbers around on our existing centrally planned system doesn't make it any more or less centrally planned.
If your proposal is not affecting who arrives and for what job, then what's the point of it?
Immigration Program A that already exists allows 200k with qualities B.
This is the state of the current world. We have an existing bureaucracy that dictates who is allowed to immigrate, and when.
Make change C so that Program X allows 250k, and Program A only allows 50k.
Change C is not changing the amount of government bureaucracy. We already had the bureaucracy! We were doing the centrally planning already, and making change C does not make it any more centrally planned, because it was already centrally planned.
Imagine a government run factory already exists. Now imagine making a change to the government fun factory. This change is not ADDITIONAL central planning, because it was already a government run factory.
We could cut bureaucracy and improve economic efficiency at the same time! I'm a small-government guy.
How do you choose which ones?
If you put on any cap, you are picking and choosing.
Personally, I'd sort by salary/expected taxes.
I've worked with many large "successful" companies over the years. At every one of them I've found bureaucratic procedures which are worse than random. They're the kind of convoluted process which started out as a good idea and then morphed over the years into a tradition for its own sake -- "that's the way it's done!" -- and gathered false post-hoc rationalizations.
It wouldn't be the full immigration system -- it would just be nice for states to have some role. There already are incentives to recruit doctors to work in underserved areas.
I'm not talking about a billion dollar startup, but trillion-dollar technology. Think Manhattan project, not WhatsApp.
So established scientists from Western countries?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2011/11/11/a-vet...
Edit: I apologize for the snark. As long as Hungary, Russia, Poland are counted as the West (and they generally are), then I agree with you.
"Why did the immigrant scientists succeed? Clearly these were some of the most highly-skilled people on earth but it was something more. Beyond their skills, Laura Fermi notes the unique characteristics and emotions that the foreign-born scientists brought to the atomic project: “The determination to defend America at all costs spurred the newcomers no less than the Americans, and the European-born may have come to this determination somewhat earlier than the native-born, driven by stronger personal emotions. The picture of their country under Nazi power in the event of a German victory was something the Americans could imagine only with difficulty.” That was not the case for those who had already seen their countries overrun."