> You'll be hard pressed to find people in the US who think that someone (legally) immigrating to the US and starting a business is a bad thing.

Then why do we keep hearing about Republicans introducing measures to reduce permitted legal immigration, especially outside of the employer-need-driven categories? Those politicians, or at least the audience they are catering to, certainly seems to think that people coming to the US for purposes other than to reduce existing firms labor costs are a bad thing.

You'd think, especially with U.S. population growth and fertility rates being so low.

In reality, the current administration is actively working to reduce legal immigration as well.[1][2] Although the policies are opposed by most, it's not difficult to find people who support reducing legal immigration as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_policy_of_Donald_T...

[2] https://www.cato.org/blog/house-gop-bill-cuts-legal-immigrat...

> In reality, the current administration is actively working to reduce legal immigration as well.

the chart in that second link shows the family based, diversity and asylee immigration being cut, but all of the employment/skill-based immigration being boosted.

that strikes me as at least trying to reflect approval of business-starting immigrants, though with a preference for younger ones.

The proposals last year included massive cutbacks on H1 and L1 visa programs, among other things. As I recall, their purported replacements for the work visa track were much more constrained, so the result was a reduction in skilled immigration.

But we know that's what that crowd wants, anyway. They haven't exactly held back in op-eds. CIS, for example, is explicitly arguing for pre-1992 annual levels specifically for the skilled category, which would imply massive cuts.