As an immigrant myself it seemed wild that I could work in the USA, and send money back to my country. It felt like a capital drain problem the USA blindsided on.
Then I realized the economic gain from labour made the whole deal very worth it for the USA. The whole idea of a workforce is that it produces more value than it costs. Although I could take the money, that generated value was staying in the USA [1]. Especially for high-skilled industries where the bottleneck to growth might be hiring, this was very much worth it for them.
[1]: This plus, of course, the chunk of capital the USA keeps as taxes.
Some of my family are very anti immigrant and glad to hear this. But I’m not sure they realize how much work is getting done in the US due to foreign labor. Combine declining immigration, declining birth rates, and a system predicated on uninterrupted, unending growth and this is setting up a big issue.