You can be anti-illegal-immigration (which is effectively being anti open borders) without being a xenophobe that is wholly “anti-immigration”.
They worked Cotton on this bill which would reduce legal immigration.
Here's a quick selection of related articles. Apologies that some of these may be paywalled. Also this was just from random googling, so I haven't fully vetted these links for accuracy/bias.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/14/1005133/h1b-visa...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/politics/international-colleg...
https://www.wired.com/story/h-1b-visa-rejections-spike-under...
(2018) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/21/us-immigrati...
(2017) https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/top-10-2017-issue-1-...
(edited for formatting)
Even if you think US border policy should be less strict/militarized, that isn't relevant to this discussion, as the number of undocumented migrants working in state-of-the-art chip design is approximately zero, and that's not because of their legal status, it is because skilled labor (which is obviously what is required for chip design/fab) is very capable of getting a visa to live in the US under the current (and previous) administrations.
In fact, the current administration has said repeatedly and explicitly that they do not want to curb legal immigration, only undocumented/illegal migration.
A cursory reading of the headline might suggest this was to prevent spreading of the virus, but the president explicitly said that it was to protect american workers from immigrants competing for jobs
There was also the case a few weeks ago where the government told students on visas that they need to leave the country if their school switches to all online courses in light of the virus[1] which is not only anti immigrant but explicitly reversing the brain drain as was mentioned earlier in the thread. They did reverse that decision but only after major colleges started a joining in a major lawsuit.
There was also the whole "Muslim ban" limiting legal migration.
Oh and ICE deported an Iranian student despite being given a court order not to, so they're also explicitly breaking the law in order to deport people[2]
In both words and actions this administration has been against legal immigration even if it's at less of a degree than illegal immigration.
[1]https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
[2]https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/01/21/iranian-northeastern-cb...
Referencing actions taken in these unprecedented circumstances as if they are the norm is incredibly disingenuous.
They continually snipe at legal immigration and make it harder for people to legally immigrate when they get the chance. A claim was made that they were pro legal immigration. Here's the counter proof