Student visas still exist. O1 visas still exist. Other routes I can't remember off the top of my head exist. The door is not closed. Indeed, even H1B visas still exist, assuming that young talented person is worth $100k more than a US citizen.

> the US wins wins when people move to the US, especially young, skilled people.

I personally lean towards this being true, but it is a claim that needs to be demonstrated comprehensively for your argument to hold water. It is not trivially true.

you know what's really stupid? when we give someone a student visa and then don't have a easy to keep them in the country on a work visa

Student visas in the US come with the right to work for some time after graduation. If the foreign student isn’t valuable enough to stay after a degree and multiple years of work I think it’s fine to send them home.

But me personally, I advocate many fewer student visas.

What world are you living in? Many Chinese come in on student visas, get jobs at FAANG and then have to move back to their country after losing the H1-B. These are the people we want, doing the jobs that we want them to do, and we’re too nearsighted to figure out how to keep them.

Again, these are the most talented, most affluent minds that China has to offer. Sure, let’s have them work for the CCP rather than keeping them in the west.

1) We don’t want them.

2) The O1 visa is open to “the most talented minds” so why couldn’t they get that.

3) They were always working for the CCP.

You do realize how ridiculous you sound when airing #3, right?

As for #1, who is 'we'?

Use game theory for #3:

-You're a Chinese national in the US on a work visa or student visa

-CCP asks you to do something

What do you do?

Let's use game theory for #3.

- You're an American running a business in the US (or somewhere else).

- Trump (or some TLA) demands that you do something, holding a threat over you.

What do you do? Are all Americans actually pawns of MAGA, or the spook agencies? How should the world respond to this implication?

This seems accurate, yes. Do you actually not think this is true?

You are showcasing your ignorance as lucidly as possible, bravo. Befriend some Chinese students studying in the US and you will quickly learn hardly any are fans of Xi and the CCP.

what does valuable enough to stay mean? that they have the job?

Indeed, though if you make that route too easy (or with limited oversight), you end up with diploma mills that aren't actually educating anyone. Incentives are hard to align well.

It wouldn't be hard to select and accredit at least the better universities. Giving an automatic work visa to every foreign Ivy graduate should be a no-brainier. You could take the top 30% or 50% ranked US News universities and accredit those, or some similar heuristics.

Great point, and since the post-graduation right to work is already a thing I believe this has already happened

Is that a thing in most countries? Like if I go to university in Brazil I can easily get a job as a foreigner there?

Brazil isn't a great example here since it is a Portuguese speaking country leading to relatively low immegration, but for Germany, for example a work visa takes 1-3 months to process, and unlike h1b there is no quota.

How so? Anybody who has a student visa had to prove that she or he has strong ties to the home country and no intent to remain in the Untied States, and that she or he only needs to get education in the US to come back and apply it for the home country's benefit.

If these people have not defrauded the US then they would not know what to do with a work visa as they'd be hurrying back home as soon as they received their diploma, pulled by those strong ties and the desire to finally put the education to use at home.

There are studies regarding that: almost half of S&P 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children https://www.brookings.edu/articles/almost-half-of-fortune-50...

This doesn’t really tell us much, and isn’t really relevant to H1B either. If we had 0 immigration, all S&P 500 companies would be founded by non-immigrants.

Not really. Companies would still be founded, but there's no way to tell if they would ever grow to the point that would be listed in the S&P 500.

Not sure if you don’t understand how they define the S&P, or you’re straw manning.

That is half true. It also would be a USA without Apple, Nvidia, Google, Tesla, Intel, Qualcomm, Yahoo, Paypal, eBay, Pfizer, P&G, Goldman Sachs...

This is a useless “technically correct” rejoinder. Yes, the top 500 would by definition still have 500 companies in it. Yes, the net value of the s&p would almost certainly be lower without the innovation brought by immigrant founders. Which is obviously the point being made.

H1B started in the 90s, when the economy was at all time highs, and since then growth has been less impressive.

It is your comment in fact that decided to assume I missed the point, while assuming something that’s almost certainly not easy to assume.

The Fortune Global 500 Companies might be a better list. 139 US companies made the list in 2025 which is 27.8%.

https://us500.com/fortune-global-500

These other visas are incredibly complicated to get. And funneling everyone through student visas is just inflating demand for uni degrees.

What someone's labor is worth is up to the market to decide. Also those $100k are taxed out of the employer and employee's value.

On the benefits of people moving to the US: it's been widely studied and it's basic economics, immigrants bring both supply and demand, so the size of the economy grows and so the opportunities to current residents.

Take the extreme: when people leave a country or city the economy there collapses, see Detroit or the increasingly old and depopulating European countries.

Or take the extreme on who comes: fiscal studies show that even low skilled immigrants are net positive fiscally. Only very old and unskilled immigrants are a fiscal burden.

Finally, thinking that we can capture the world's economy in a bottle and live lavishly without competition is delusional. If we stop letting people build here, they will build elsewhere and without us. We are increasingly less relevant.

Let's turn this around - would the US win if young, skilled people were net-leaving it?

Imagine spending 25 years raising, educating, feeding, and clothing a person, investing over a million dollars of money and labour in them, and then they just pack their bags and leave.

Educated, skilled, young immigrants are a colossal gift to the host country, and a crippling debit on the welfare and prosperity of the country they have left.

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Anyone who has ever given it more than thirty seconds of thought knows that countries become wealthy when people living in them work - and make stuff. So what do you do to improve a country's prosperity?

Obviously, in backwards-logic, you start raising barriers to people who want to do useful work in it.

(Because dealing with the systemic issues that have resulted in the country becoming prosperous not being correlated with the plurality of people in it not becoming prosperous would upset wealthy people who don't actually build anything.)

Have you never met an H-1B worker?

My limited experience with H1B labor is not folks who are young nor particularly skilled. They are cheaper and faster to staff.

I'm by no means xenophobic. Bring in all the immigrants you want. But I can't agree that H1Bs are working as designed and pull in labor that doesn't otherwise already exist in the US.

I genuinely don’t know: how many H1Bs were granted this year while we have read about numerous layoffs? Were those H1Bs truly necessary? Were they paid at or above market rates?

But if you want to attract young talented and skilled people into the US, I don't think H1B is a good way to do it. I would imagine is more likely to result in people leaving after gaining skills and experience and set up shop back home where the money they earned stretches farther. Many of them are forced to do so after their employer tosses them away so why would you come here with any different plan to start with? There is no clearly laid out path to come here on an H1B and guarantee you get to stay even if you do stellar work.