The US should want to keep the talent it selects and trains. These are people who build the economy, generate IP, and create jobs in the long run. Not only that, but these people who have spent 4+ years in the US university education system are extremely well-adapted to life in the US and will thrive at making the US a better place.

(Yes there's OPT, but it's not long enough and doesn't provide a path to permanent residency.)

No. No. No. That would mean that anyone from the University of Oxford would be out until he got himself a masters degree from the Christian College of Lost Hope, AR. There are far too many paid masters degrees around already that serve exactly that purpose and that are good for no one except the useless college.

Yeah no, screw that crap. I don't know the exact regulation framework that would accomplish my intent but you understand what I mean.

I'm talking about all the people with bonafide degrees and skillsets. 4-year bachelor degrees, PhDs, MDs, and the like. These people should be treated as assets to the country. (Maybe just excluding masters' degrees is the answer, but I'm not sure.) It's dumbfoundingly stupid as a national policy to invest so much in resources to train a person and then send them back to another country instead of giving them every incentive to stay.

Singapore and Australia (and maybe others I don't know about) allow international students to apply for permanent residency if they meet certain very reasonable qualifications and it works out very much in their favor for retaining talent.

Undergraduate degree holders would only be rewarded for completing degrees in in the US in emerging and vital fields (mostly STEM). Awarding permanent residency to someone completing an Bachelors in communication at the worst college in the US is simply inviting abuse. Master's holders would get permanent residency in an expanding set of fields and ideally PhDs in every field. There may be some cases of abuse, but there should never be the case where a smart person educated in the US, especially in a growing or important field is forced out of the country because they didn't win a lottery.

Unfortunately, this is ripe for abuse. You're basically allowing educational institutions to sell green cards. If you thought almost-unlimited-student-loans inflated education prices, you don't even want to see what selling green cards would do.

> but there should never be the case where a smart person educated in the US, especially in a growing or important field is forced out of the country

I agree with the premise, but this is kind of like "It is better than 1000 guilty men go free, than 1 innocent man be wrongly convicted". It sounds great in premise, but in practice can't reasonably happen. Again, I agree with your premise, but I think it needs to be approached in a different way.

That's pretty much how it's done in Australia. It props up a massive industry (education was the fourth largest export in 2018-2019) whilst ensuring a supply of qualified applicants for residency.

Prices for locals are still set by the government. So, whilst there is inflation, disadvantage to locals is limited to there being fewer places available to them. Whether it's morally okay is another question but the economics seem to work out pretty well.

As an immigrant to (and citizen of) Australia myself, I find it pretty appalling how hard it has become to become a permanent resident in Australia even if you are reasonably skilled (and the fact that permanent residency requires nomination by an employer -- which is unlike most other countries, where permanent residency is based on your own residence and skills). The work-based streams are becoming more and more narrow and it's longer the case that studying in Australia gives you any guaranteed pathway to residency (and I would argue it hasn't been the case for a fairly long time now).

[+]: A quick look at the EOI statistics <https://api.dynamic.reports.employment.gov.au/anonap/extensi...> shows that 7.2% ((LODGED+INVITED)/SUBMITTED ~= 7.2%) of people who register their interest end up being invited.

You'd be surprised there. The degree that gives best odds in law school is actually philosophy. If you want to keep the tradition of Latin alive you need kids who have taken decent Latin in school. Chemistry and the life sciences, on the other hand, there is a terrifying oversupply of graduates. I agree with the need for quality control.

GP:> completing an Bachelors in communication at the worst college in the US

I think the key here should be "worst college in the US" and not the Bachelors in communication. If you got a communication degree from Mizzou or Columbia that's a totally different bar than a communication degree from a community college. The institutions and programs should be accredited, and demonstrate some standard of selectivity.

You want talented people in every field to stay in your country and create value and jobs, and selectivity for university admission is often a good proxy for that. The bar doesn't need to be insanely higher either; anyone who creates value and by doing so either directly or indirectly creates more jobs is worthwhile to keep.

/s

I'd even argue in favor of government financial aid for international students that meet certain bars of merit or talent. Give them a free ride if they are that talented. Then let them build the next company and hire a bunch of Americans. Hand them a US passport as well if they get there.

Also, PhDs are another story -- they are not revenue sources for the university, but they are a means to quality research, and very much an investment.

I don't know about Singapore but this definitely isn't true for Australia these days -- visa programs in Australia are far more strict than they used to be (in fact, my parents and I probably couldn't have migrated here under the current visa system -- we came to Australia in 1999).

The Temporary Graduate visa (485) is -- as the name suggests -- temporary, and only lasts between 2-4 years if you graduated from an Australian university. If you want to go for permanent residency you (generally speaking) need to be endorsed by your employer through the Employer Nomination Scheme visa (186) which requires 3 years work experience in your field -- the practical upshot is that you would need to have been granted a visa that lasts longer than 3 years (no guarantee of this), get a job in your field immediately after you graduate (seriously no guarantee of this since many employers in fields like engineering illegally discriminate against people who hold temporary working visas), and find an employer (within the last few months of your visa) who is willing to nominate you for permanent residency and has an existing labour agreement with the government.

It's not impossible to do, but it's hardly a simple procedure and it's definitely not true that graduates have a guaranteed roadmap to apply for permanent residency. There are some visa programs which in theory would allow you to apply for permanent residency earlier, but they are invitation-only and usually have pretty high requirements which most people wouldn't fulfil.

> I'm talking about all the people with bonafide degrees and skillsets. 4-year bachelor degrees, PhDs, MDs, and the like.

I know what you mean, but that's not good enough; you'd need to find a way to make it legislatively watertight, and I'm not sure that's possible.

But barring that pipe dream, yours seems like an acceptable interim step.

I struggle to see how your idea would be better for any Americans, except the owner-class.

A rising tide (growing economy) lifts all boats. Think of all the services that would need to expand -- markets, restaurants, hair salons, etc.

Furthermore, immigrants contribute more to the tax base than citizens because they pay the same income taxes without getting all the deductions, they pay sales taxes and other taxes, and do not get the same benefits.

It's well established that an immigrant with a job is a net contributor to both the economy and the tax base.

Do this thought experiment -- so many immigrants come to the US and contribute so much to the tax base that there is enough to pay every US citizen $75,000 a year in UBI and provide universal healthcare for citizens. Now you can do whatever you want, work or not, it doesn't matter.

That's why it's good for citizens.

So a thought experiment for you. Can you find any historical precedence where these two-tier systems were implemented. And how did that work out?

Well heeled thinktanks can continue to try and bamboozle people but after watching every contracting crew in my area become 99% low paid latino immigrant I have no reason to want the same thing to happen to software development when it's one of the few remaining paths to a nice middle class life. I guess I'm supposed to retrain as an attorney or something right?

As a result, public investment funded via taxes has moved to deficit spending and sporadic and selective philanthropy, exacerbating both the inequality of wealth and opportunity.

Funny, most Americans who aren't working for FAANG would absolutely disagree with you here. It's almost as cliche as the "wealth trickles down" or supply side economics.

Maybe that's just cause I'm old enough to have seen these bullshit statements evolve.

The "rising tides" lie started in the 80's and 90's and was constantly used by our leaders and the media to ensure the blue collar workers who were being devastated by offshoring and the beginning of a huge surge in immigration. Don't worry guys - even though all your factories are being dismantled and reassembled in S. China and Mexico, the gains will be spread around for everyone. And, something something retraining...

By the 2000's, enough blue collar workers, especially in the Rust Belt, had never seen any improvements, so the lie changed. It was now, "You need to get an education". I think if you're old enough here, you should remember that during GW Bush and into Obama's presidencies, that was combined with "Some of these jobs just aren't coming back..." which was appended because our leaders knew that wages weren't rising enough in the third world to ever bring the manufacturing back - not when the system now depended on a permanent devalued Chinese Yuan, Mexican Peso, etc.

So now we get to somewhere around Obama's times, during the Great Recession, when tens of millions were already unemployed and now almost NO college grads were getting offers. That was when the game was upped: "Did you idiots think we were talking about any degree? You need to get one of those STEM degrees. Haha, underwater basket weaving ain't gonna help you", cried the Boomers at the WSJ and Cato Institute. That was after college costs had been rising exponentially for a decade, so now those non-STEM majors were fked. Oh well.

But the truth is that most STEM majors aren't even having an easy time in most areas outside SV and during bubbles. Do you think the average EE or Chemistry major is getting a dozen offers in the labs when they're also filled up with hundreds of thousands of foreign students on Opt visas and who don't have to pay payroll taxes (neither their employer)? CS isn't any better: Go on to https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/ and you'll find post after post with decent CS grads giving up after applying for 12 months without getting a single call back. We have recruiters here that tell us they get 1000 applications for every job, so this isn't surprising.

The whole H1B system should be shut down, all those who are not being paid minimum $250K given 1 month to leave for each year they've been here. Those who are get a Green Card. That $250K is tied to housing costs in each city, too. They go up, so does the minimum.

Shut off the L1 and Student OPT programs completely, too, and give our burdened students a chance at a decent job. Better than them joining Antifa and burning down shit.

Let's dare these billionaire executives to either start spreading the wealth around to the whole country which gave them their opportunity, or they move themselves, their families, and their companies to the third world where they seem to find most of their workforce nowadays.

Then Silicon Valley might be actually forced to hire "diverse" black, hispanic, etc. Americans instead of giving it lip service while employing 70% non-diverse Brahmins from India.

That said, I would assume that short term increased supply would lead to a tighter job market.

Sure that seems unlikely, but when millions of people are willing to become undocumented immigrants, it’s likely a more open policy would see dramatically larger influxes. Especially in response to local events like civil wars. Really, just raising the caps by say 10% every year gets the same result without the chaos.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when I was writing the above, but didn't want to get too into the weeds on what I wanted to be a short answer to the original question (I have a habit of going on...).

Like many things, an immediate large change has repercussions that are detrimental and can possibly be alleviated with a measured change over time.

That's how you acclimate fish to the temperature in a new aquarium. That said, it's also how they tell you to boil a frog...

There are studies showing a slight decrease in wages, studies showing a slight increase in wages, and studies showing nothing conclusive. There's basically not enough scientific consensus to use for decision making, which means it's more a moral choice than an economic one.

This is from May 2020:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/19/quarantine-...

Basically, the UK fruit industry was worried that it might not get "enough workers" because of COVID restrictions.

Which of course is brazen corporate double-speak. There are workers in the UK, like tens of millions of them. It's just that they're not willing to work for miserly wages. So there's only two options: (1) increase local wages, or (2) import cheap foreigners. Business obviously prefer the latter. ("But but but strawberry prices would increase" isn't a good argument - agriculture is heavily subsidized anyways.)

Somehow businesses forget how supply and demand works when it comes to labor, and "journalists" aren't, so much as they just transcribe whatever falls out of rich peoples' mouths and call it 'balance'.

We'll be back to feudalism in a couple generations.

Would be fun to build super cities at a rapid pace over the next decade though :)

If our economy grew by 500M new jobs, that would be unequivocally good. Those 500M people would be paying taxes, buying goods and services, paying for housing, etc.

Or do you get a gig, show up, quit, and then live on the dole?

So you'd either have to live off of your savings or get another job or go back to your home country.

Or crime.

I still think that it would drag salaries down significantly. I know employment and salaries are not a zero sum game, but the offer/supply ratio is a parameter.

In the US, over 3 million Puerto Ricans are now allowed to migrate to the mainland US (say to DC). The borders are completely open to them. In Europe, similarly, around 20M Romanians are allowed to Sweden. But they don’t.

Just because people are allowed to migrate, it doesn’t mean they will. And in the case of an overwhelming majority, they won’t.

According to Wikipedia, as of 2018 there were 5.8 million Puerto Ricans living stateside. The population of Puerto Rico is around 2.8 million. There are more than twice as many Puerto Ricans living on the mainland as there are in Puerto Rico.

The myths about the negative consequences of open border policy have no basis in reality.

Most people don’t migrate away from their home country/state. But even if they did, it would be of no negative consequence for the place they migrate to.

It should be clarified that this is because they are US citizens. Everyone in North Dakota can move to DC too.

Supposedly allowed and not at all welcome. Like most affluent countries, Sweden doesn't actually want poor people immigrating into their country. So they make things very difficult for those people. It's also why they shut down the big immigration flood, their society was highly intolerant to it.

Americans - commonly ignorant to the details of rest of the world - would be shocked to learn how regressive Scandinavia can be. From very strict immigration to virtually bulldozing minority neighborhoods in Denmark [1][2], to attacks on immigrants in Sweden and burning immigrant camps, to large political parties derived from former neo-nazi groups.

From Reuters in 2015 (the Romanians got the message):

"A series of attacks in Sweden on beggars, many Roma, has highlighted a dark side to a country considered a bastion of tolerance but where the far right has been gaining support by claiming society is under threat from waves of immigrants."

"An influx of thousands of mainly Roma migrants has shocked affluent Swedes, with beggars now a common sight outside supermarkets, IKEA stores and subways in the capital."

"There were around 300 reported attacks on Roma in 2014, up 23 percent on the year before, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. Police say the figures underestimate the scale of the problem."

"The government reckons around 5,000 migrants, some of whom also come from Hungary, are in Sweden begging. Many live on the street or in squalid camps. In recent months, attackers have thrown acid at beggars and burned tents and caravans."

"Many migrants in Sweden say they want to work, but lack of education and language skills make it impossible for most, leaving begging as the only alternative."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-sweden/sw...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/europe/denmark-immi...

"When Rokhaia Naassan gives birth in the coming days, she and her baby boy will enter a new category in the eyes of Danish law. Because she lives in a low-income immigrant neighborhood described by the government as a “ghetto,” Rokhaia will be what the Danish newspapers call a “ghetto parent” and he will be a “ghetto child.”

Starting at the age of 1, “ghetto children” must be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including nap time, for mandatory instruction in “Danish values,” including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language. Noncompliance could result in a stoppage of welfare payments. Other Danish citizens are free to choose whether to enroll children in preschool up to the age of six."

[2] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/15/900874510/facing-eviction-res...

"Facing Eviction, Residents Of Denmark's 'Ghettos' Are Suing The Government"

Sweden and Denmark are easy to point out as they have very racist and discriminatory policies on a national and local level. But Iceland and Norway also have terrible refugee policies and rampant xenophobia (especially in more rural setting).

The real bottleneck in most American metros is more people than not loath density and want a garage and a yard. Without changing that, or finding a way to make it work, it's hard for the States to absorb people.

I really do think that Americans need to figure their crap out though - either you live in the middle of a city or you get your yard. I hate cars so I'm pretty happy in the city but that isn't the opinion of everyone.

That doesn't make your point any less valid though.