>It’s like a sports team: you have the ability to draft the top players from around the world for cheap. Why would you decide to boycott the draft itself and let the competitors (India, China) take those players? Especially some players that you have already trained (graduated students, post docs)

You're thinking about it from the wrong perspective. The people who are anti-immigration are anti-immigration because they personally might be negatively impacted (in terms of losing jobs or getting lower wages), even if it means the country as a whole is better off. Seeing the US GDP grow 30% faster is little consolation to you when you've lost your job to immigrants (or at least, you thought that you did). Going back to the sports team analogy, it'd be great if your team drafted the best international players and won, but what if that resulted in you getting kicked off the team, or sidelined most of the season?

If that’s the case, then why not have teams draft from the region they represent? For example, maybe the Patriots should not have had a foreign Michigander as their QB for 20 years, that spot could have been given to some up and coming Boston College graduate.

To address your point a bit more directly: can you show me studies where native born Americans have lost jobs to immigrants in the US? I know that many jobs got moved to China and Mexico, but that’s not what I am wondering about.

> If that’s the case, then why not have teams draft from the region they represent? For example, maybe the Patriots should not have had a foreign Michigander as their QB for 20 years, that spot could have been given to some up and coming Boston College graduate.

In the sports analogy, I'm describing it from the point of a player, not a fan. A fan's role in this is closer to shareholder rather than employee. They primarily care about winning (presumably). Ultimately the team is beholden to their fans, not to their players.

>To address your point a bit more directly: can you show me studies where native born Americans have lost jobs to immigrants in the US? I know that many jobs got moved to China and Mexico, but that’s not what I am wondering about.

That's not my personal position, by the way, so I'm not going to bother looking up statistics for it. I'm only describing what anti-immigration's perceptions are. It's safe to say that there's a widely held belief (among immigration opponents, at least) that immigrants "steal" jobs from natives. eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Criticisms_of_the_pr...

It's not just lost jobs. It's also depressed wages.

Immigrants are overrepresented when it comes to founding companies. They are better at creating jobs compared to their non-immigrant counterparts.

> The people who are anti-immigration are anti-immigration because they personally might be negatively impacted

That's generally untrue, though it is what people think. For one thing, the same flexibility that lets MIT pull from around the world lets a student in Boston apply around the world instead of being stuck with whatever Boston has to offer.

The Universities, industry, and government colluded against the American public in order to increase profits for the 1%. There is a write-up about it here:

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-gove...

That's one opinion, yes. Not a widely-held one.

The whole Democratic/progressive platform is based on the idea that government and industry are working together to funnel money to the wealthy.

Did you care to address the paper attached to the article I linked to?

Realistically the actual competitors of America here are Canada, the UK and Europe more generally.

I suspect that a lot of this immigration is both the desire for high-paying jobs and to live in a (slightly) more stable country.

There is a growing number of Chinese students who graduate from top Chinese universities or return to work in China after their US education. The US may hold a dominant position right now, but that lead is fading and the unwelcoming attitude towards immigrants is driving the best and brightest back home. This is especially true in engineering (vs academia where US still has a huge advantage), where there has been an explosion in Chinese tech companies who pay salaries competent to US tech companies when adjusting for CoL. It’s therefore not surprising that in the last decade we saw many rising Chinese companies like TikTok, Xiaomi, Tencent make waves even in American markets. In the next decade, if the US fails to capture the brightest minds of the world, we could see China start to become a viable alternative to the US, especially for tech workers.

Yeah... I don't see how anyone would strive to go to China considering everything that's been happening and how racist they are to African immigrant workers over there. If you think the US government is acting xenophobic, China is on a whole different level.

Video of an Africans being evicted from chinese apartment due to racism https://youtu.be/KQaNdTKQyLY?t=310

https://youtu.be/V3jHADADWc0?t=39

Racist incidents against Africans in China amid coronavirus crackdown spark outcry https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-racism-africans-chi...

Africans told to leave homes as Chinese regime blames foreigners for bringing CCP virus to China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvN4WHBhnoo

That is true whataboutism. Parent talked about Chinese students going back to China. No idea how Chinese discrimination against people of colour applies here.

I can't imagine it being viable for most Western tech workers given the climate of human rights and politics. I am a tech worker, I even have a particular interest in China and know a little Mandarin but I would never live or work there long term given what I know.

It really doesn’t need western tech workers that much in huge troves. Look at people Alibaba has poached for top AI positions.

Also, are you aware of 1000 Talents plan?

I suppose you are also aware of Tsinghua and other 8 schools that are super strong? Especially two of them in AI.

I completely agree that the borders should be open and bringing bright people from the all over the world to the US is fantastic. I am also opposed to the recent ruling. I am thankful that you are here. However, I do think the term "generation" is unnecessarily hyperbolic. We are talking about a year (or two), not a generation.

We are of a like mind.

To answer the "why" folks may think this, you and I are considering the general equilibrium impact of the policy, but the vast majority of folks think in terms of partial equilibrium/first order. And on a first order, the "jobs" that folks holding these student visas will be vacated and thus "available" for domestic students. Such nativist views typically fail to grasp that said jobs may simply not be available due to companies sending work to the talent, not just to the trained.

Myopia is a terrible thing to live in denial with, but unfortunately such as things are.