I think you missed the entire point of my post above.

The US's biggest strength is it's soft power at the elite level.

Because of bad experiences like immigration, the US has been losing influence as foreign decision makers soured on the US due to crap treatment.

He didn't miss the point. You're missing the point that if these people soured the US because it was hard to immigrate, they are being very hypocritical. It's hard to immigrate anywhere ("crap treatment"), including the countries they came from.

It's somewhat difficult to immigrate to most places, but usually the difficulties can be resolved in weeks or months. The US level of difficulty is an exception, not the norm.

Or more accurately, the processes are obfuscated and full of inexplicable delays. Why would someone even consider hiring a lawyer for something as simple and common as employment-based immigration? And how can the green card process take longer than a few months?

If it were that bad people would've stopped migrating to US long long back. In this case people are speaking with their feet (including those who chose to go back)

>Because of bad experiences like immigration, the US has been losing influence as foreign decision makers soured on the US due to crap treatment.

So what?

Well, the elite in formerly pro-American countries like Thailand, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brazil start turning to competitors like China or Russia, or deciding to go it on their own.

Countries like India or Vietnam only began starting to warm to the US because of the diaspora. If the diaspora gets treated like shit, anti-Americanism begins to breed.

A similar thing happened in China in the 2010s.

I see you omitted Pak from this list. Was it an exclusive list?

Pakistan leaned pro-China since the 1960s after Ayub Khan normalized relations with China over Aksai Chin and Pakistan helped negotiate the Sino-US Pact, but fully pivoted after Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto became PM, as he had a good working relationship with Mao [4]

The Pakistani nuclear program was jumpstarted by PLA technology transfers in the 1970s [0][5], Pakistani Tank Technology like Al-Khalid are results of PLA tech transfers in the early 1990s [1], Pakistan began adopting Chinese fighter jet IP in the early 1990s [2], and the entire indigenous missles program in Pakistan began thanks to Chinese IP transfers in the 80s [3]

The US-Pakistan relationship was always transactional and surface level. Chinese SOEs would at least invest in Military affiliated companies like Heavy Industries Taxila, Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, Khan Research Laboratories, Global Industrial Defence Solutions, and National Defence Complex

The countries in the list abovr had a relationship with the US that was similar to that between China-Pakistan, but began pivoting away from the US in the 2010s.

[0] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/41394229

[1] - https://www.dawn.com/news/1217909

[2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20121021154725/http://www.flight...

[3] - https://web.archive.org/web/20081007232310/http://www.wiscon...

[4] - https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/02/archives/bhutto-confers-w...

[5] - https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB114/

Sad that it came this far from Edward Durrell Stone designing PINSTECH

Stone designing PINSTECH was because of Abdus Salam.

Though, even PINSTECH pivoted to China by the 70s [0].

The India-Pakistan rivalry forced Pakistan to try and reach parity with India via Chinese technology transfers.

And yea. American hubris will lose us the next war.

[0] - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA318316.pdf