US does not produce and brain drain enough talent for her needs. Yes US has one of the more permissive immigration systems in the world, but IT'S NO LONGER ENOUGH relative to PRC indigenous talent pipeline. 3/4 million is small potatoes when you're up against 5M+. US isn't competing against PRC on immigration, it's competing on net workforce improvement. US unlikely to have political space to massively ramp up immigration, maybe can close shortage gap, but increasing by 3-4M to stay at parity with PRC isn't politically happening.
>with a straight face
You're overinterpretting, I'm not saying US is ceding absolute immigration advantage, I'm saying it's ceding it's advantage of being able to brain drain PRC talent via generating bad domestic enviroment for ethnically Chinese talent that is pushing many to leave.
>whole generation of Chinese previous STEM students from top universities are now in upper leadership positions...in the USA
Yes, which I acknowledged. But now they're largely staying in PRC for years (precovid) US isn't braindraining PRC best on scale that can degrade PRC indigenous industries anymore. There is a generational difference talent willing to emmigrate. Hence US ceding her all upside advantage of draining/denying PRC access to her best, and now has to redirect to draining more of (likely) India's best. This is arguably triple win for PRC.
All of which is to say, yes US immigration is still a US strength, but it's advantage is vastly diminished vs PRC building up indigenous talent pipeline over last few decades. That +2 advantage was insurmountable gap when most of world was at +0, or even -1 (brain drain), but now it's up against PRC's+5. And where US could feasibly degrade PRC +5 into +4, it chose not to, instead pushing that -1 onto India.
> Denying US PRC talent isn't about crippling US talent procurement, which US immigration policy does itself. It's about retaining PRC compatible talent - as you say, US can draw from English world, PRC largely rely from drawing from within. US denying itself large segment of talent that only benefits PRC to retain is a relative win. It's like the one area where could US win by default but chooses to cede.
I don't know how you can say this with a straight face when PRC immigration policies are much much worse. The USA has a system that is hard to get through, sure, but many many people get through it with permanent residency and citizenship at the end. Very very few get through the PRC's immigration system, even of Chinese descent, as you say all China can do is retain talent.
> It's like the one area where could US win by default but chooses to cede.
Again, the fact that the USA grants 740k green cards a year is not small potatoes, and many of those are in tech, high level STEM positions of talent. When I worked in China, I was the only foreigner in my team, maybe a few foreigners in our entire lab. Now, I'm working at Google in the USA, I can count the born-in-America types on one hand, most of my coworkers are immigrants, a long with a lot of young Chinese new grads. It doesn't feel like much as changed on the ground, but ya, Indian immigrants are gaining lots of ground over Chinese immigrants in leadership positions and such, which is something I wouldn't have predicted 20 years ago (look at the top CEO positions).