The locals seem to agree -- it has been Bay Area communities' policy to hinder international and interstate migration into the area by limiting new construction, on the grounds that more people makes the community a worse place to live.
I've been here 25 years now... Do I count? My son grew up here, does he count even though he's my son? I'm sure the Native Americans or the Spanish after them would love to chat about your ideas on immigration. This state would be a pristine garden without all the northern European descendents mucking up the place.
How far back do we need to go? Talk about no commute and lots of free time! Get rid of all the immigrants and this place would be heaven. Sadly, all the people who consider themselves "local" would have to go as well.
Huh.
If the population is really sparse, immigration really does improve the society -- it allows for specialization, with supermarkets, karate studios, and the like. Then, as the population gets more dense, the marginal benefit of population growth, assuming random average people, decreases. Eventually, it goes negative. At that point, you need to raise the bar -- e.g. only admit high quality immigrants, or family reunification (which benefits citizen family members). The higher the population, the higher the bar needs to get raised.
The problem with your analysis is that it doesn't take into account the total population number. Any advocacy for immigration that doesn't differentiate between a national population of 100 million, 350 million, and 900 million, if that advocacy argues that it benefits the country, is intrinsically defective,
H-1B is about skills in high demand not extraordinary ability.
Many personal friends of mine are H-1B and they would not be even considered the best or brightest in their own household.
Of course, you have to be somewhat smart to meet the basic requirements: bachelor's degree or equivalent. But that does not mean you are among the best.
I’ve worked with a handful of EB-1 holders. I wouldn’t qualify a single one as “exceptional.” Fine coworkers, sure, but to a one the justification for EB-1 strained credulity.
I have however worked with several H1-B holders of whom I would say the opposite.
I recommend you think lightly of posts like these. This is not a debate, and if it was, there's clearly nothing to win.
So Melania Trump was the best and brightest? By what metric?
Evidence that you command a high salary or other significantly high remuneration in relation to others in the field
Evidence of your commercial successes in the performing arts
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/questions-linger-abo...
Currently, 48M+ people in the U.S. were born outside the U.S. and we welcome a larger total number (like 1.2M+) of immigrants per year than any other country in the world. By far - it's like double the closest country easily, year in and year out. Basically all of Western Europe combined. Might as well have a lot of them be PhDs and other highly skilled/educated people.
Besides, half of Silicon Valley was started by immigrants or children of immigrants - maybe more. In my experience, third+ generation Americans tend to take what they have for granted. If you've worked your ass off and crossed the world to get to the U.S., you're the type of person we want here. It's been that way for literally generations. To quote Hamilton (which I just saw this weekend), "Immigrants. They get the job done."