US Immigration is fuelled by the immense drawcard of becoming an American, not by any great achievement in it’s immigration policies. You’d get much more & better candidates with a logical system.

Source: I’m an immigrant. I ended up in Canada for unrelated reasons, but the system in Canada is much better. Tough, but fair, mostly transparent, and even kind in some ways. In the US it’s so byzantine by comparison.

Agree completely: the people coming here are the strength, whereas our janky system gets in the way of that.

> drawcard of becoming an American

Which is what the person you are replying to meant anyway.

Immigration to many other countries is not that much prettier

In what way exactly? In most countries the only requirement is to have a work contract. No higher education, no rules that employers must show that they can't find local talent for the position, no limitations on the number of immigrants per year.

I am an immigrant myself (not in the US), the only paper I needed was a work contract. After a year of working I got permanent residence with no further requirements attached, it's no longer tied to having a work contract.

UK for example is rather draconian, I've even seen difficulties for friends who've married Americans and said partners have had to jump through hoops.

From my limited knowledge Canada and Germany have much more rational immigration systems.

There used to be much tighter rules on immigration and many fewer people coming even while the US was the largest economy of the world. So I don't think it has always been a superpower of the US.

Japan also had the second largest economy for decades and a very tight immigration system. China will overtake the US on economy soon if it hasn't already and they have very tight immigration also.

We also overproduce PhDs right now and elite-overproduction is something that seems to be very destabilizing.