Their son is doing well, but I don’t see how it makes economic sense for Canada at that point. It boils down to a circuitous and expensive way to direct government dollars to smart people who are likely to have smart kids. You could save yourself a step and just give lower income kids in Canada IQ tests and throw money at the promising ones.
It doesn't.
Look at immigration numbers from 2000 to 2026 and overlay them with productivity per capita and GDP per capita.
The federal government will give extra points to an applicant with an engineering degree without ever bothering to check whether the immigrant's degree would be accepted by an accredited licensing board.
In some cases, it's possible to get accredited by passing a series of exams (the same ones given to 22-year-old new grads). Figuring out why the pass rates are so low for foreign applicants without a mutually recognized degree is left as an exercise for the reader...
Bringing people over has negative consequences in the US (housing demand goes up; water demand goes up; power demand goes up) and in the person's home country (money doesn't flow to the local country; good people leave who should be staying and building their own country).
Why should US employers be forced to pay $100k to Donny or compromise for substandard smaller labor pool in the US and bear increased costs?
It comes down to whether you have a globalist or nationalist mindset. Depending on which, you will come to a different conclusion about what to think. Should a government prioritize the individual success of citizens of its country, or the profitability of companies domiciled there (and therefore overall national economic performance)? Which approach, which tide lifts more boats by a meaningful amount? Which comports with a government's stated duties?
You decide!
The problem with all anti-H1B discourse is Lump Of Labor fallacy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy ). The loudest people are the least educated about the consequences of blocking high skilled immigration.
This is wrong. In practice, we bias toward this rule because it happens to align with benefit to society moreso than other rules (most of the time), but it is not the end, it is the means. The responsibility of employers (and all people participating in society) is to jointly maintain, and ideally improve, society. That's part of why government exists - to control harm-doers.
Also, "the loudest people are the least educated" is probably true on most topics, but it's not a great way to make an argument. You should address the smartest people who disagree with you, not the dumbest (and that way, you also avoid being perceived as believing you are better than other people, which damns so much socially-bisected discourse at scale).
The fact that America is global tech leader is thanks to foreigners, all these FAANGs and MAG7s and OpenAI and Anthropic, the paper "Transformers is all your need", everything was created by highly skilled foreigners.
Without foreigners there is no tech sector, no sweet MAG7 and FAANG stock returns, America would be steamrolled in tech the same way Ford, Chevrolet, Buick, and Dodge were steamrolled by Toyota and BMW.
All of whom would have no problem securing an O-1.
The H-1B is a mess, in no small part because you can have world-class contributors and low-skill, entry-level positions applying for the same visa.
Second, this admin (steven miller et al) and loud wignats supporting it, want to shutdown all immigration completely, starting with high skilled one.
So please lets stop pretending that wignats will accept any immigration. Just say you sont want brown people, and that will be honest at least.
A lot of H1Bs are more qualified than the O-1 just because its easier to get coming from top tier Ivy League school and phd
Smart people are not arguing that we should have zero immigration forever. They are arguing that H1B should be reformed or replaced (e.g. with O-1, or something else), which, yes, is synonymous with destroying it in its current form. And they are arguing that offshoring should be punished unless actually necessary. This does not conflict with the historical case studies you are using as dramatic rhetorical example.
Maybe the people you are disagreeing with are wrong - you could simply argue that. But you are making a different argument. It's going to be very hard to convince Americans that Americans should not be protected by America, and that everybody suffering is just a stupid racist idiot who should accept what is happening to their homes and livelihoods instead of trying to comprehend solutions.
It is very easy to undermine American big tech. If tomorrow China comes up with cheaper version of American tech products it will be over. Same way TikTok took over social media, same way DeepSeek can undermine openai/anthropic, and any other random SAAS can undermine existing american SAAS, because American salaries are 2x-4x compared to other countries. The moment America experiences reverse brain drain and alternative tech hubs are established, they can undercut prices with the same quality. So do not take it for granted that America will be tech leader forever, the global immigration is the only thing that keeps the leadership and drains other countries of top talent.
Immigration must be legislated by Congress, it is their job. GOP controlled the congress during trump1 and trump2 and decided not do anything. Superior Court mostly decided to maintain the status quo.
I am for reasonable and thoughtful reform of immigration, that should be done by Congress. Current admin has zero capability and no interest to pursue bona-fide reform.
All they want is throw defenseless foreigners under the bus and draw blood of innocent people for a big show, all while stealing money for themselves. and GOP voting base has no interest in keeping the people in power in check and demand accountability.
This is why I am firmly against the current admin using administrative procedures to halt immigration via backdoors like "$100k admin fee". Let's be honest here - nobody is interested in recouping admin costs of adjudicating immigration paperwork. They are simply using $100k to stop it.
The authority for stopping/reforming immigration lies firmly with Congress.
Who'd imagine squeezing the middle class would backfire epically? Compensation hasn't reflected the GDP per capital increases for the majority of the workforce. I don't think even the productivity increases from personal computers in the end of the 1970's have trickled down.
The obvious problem is that you can only develop a "desirable" area so much before you have fundamentally altered it. When there is a perception that the demand is driven in large part by people moving into the country, rather than by being born, that naturally engenders bitterness. When there is a perception that there are plenty of other areas available for development, which would then become desirable over time, but the developers want money and the government is focused on short-term goals, that further engenders bitterness. This is all very natural, and doesn't necessitate people to be unreasonably NIMBY to oppose it. Again, most people would.
Then we stopped doing that, with devastating consequences for many people wishing to move to places with better opportunities: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388 - as well as the economy as a whole.
You can read about it in books like Arbitrary Lines https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781642832549/ar... or Zoning Rules https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/books/zoning-rules/
I think if you want to be able to block your neighbors from building denser housing on their property then that should only be enforceable if it was agreed to by everybody in advance when they bought the place (e.g. via an HOA contract or some similar type of restriction on the property deed). Otherwise this is tantamount to allowing Walmart to get a vote on whether to allow Target to set up next door.
I totally agree it's both, although most first world populations have low birth rates (until you add in generational immigration from high birth rate cultures), so slow building works well.
Actual immigration from outside the US is a vanishingly small part of our housing problems, just as immigrants do not actually "eat the cats and dogs".
Where I live in Oregon the conflict is almost entirely about other Americans moving here vs those pulling up the ladder - which doesn't, of course,stop anyone from moving here, it just means only the wealthy can, rather than teachers, nurses, firefighters and so on.
This is a pretty stark straw man. It's very normal to be critical of immigration policy without believing that immigrants will eat your pets, and it's petty to try to implicitly cast the person you're talking to into that camp.
Of course you can - good point. It's just extremely misleading to. However, "throughout history" America is only about 400 years in total, and for a lot of that there was loads of free land available. And - more importantly - no benefits, so you came to the US to carve out a new life from the soil, not to join a successful nation and raise house prices.
Land in America is now settled, and that means that historical time is over, and no more applicable to debates today than it would be in any other nation, for most of whom the first 400 years would also have been a time of settling and opportunity.
Why would investments by employers result in higher compensation for employees?
That said, median real individual income has increased substantially since the 1970s: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/mepainusa672n
https://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-job...
I.e. no, it's not a zero sum game, but it is a complex system with inputs, outputs, some finite resources, and lots of human subjectivity and desires. Concrete harm easily comes from bad immigration policy (regardless of the "direction" of the policy's badness).
This is true in the literal sense in which you are using the phrase, but the context is not realistic. This sentiment is used a lot in defense of bad policy.
Economics is a zero sum game, just not a static one. People are variables in the equation, which makes it non-trivial (after all, people are the entities splitting the sum, which is normally not part of the system of a "zero sum game").
The point is that the implication that "more people === better" is an oversimplification, to be point of being meaningless. In some contexts, more people makes everything better for everybody. In some contexts, more people makes everything worse for everybody. In most contexts, it's somewhere in between. Where the sparks really fly is when more people makes things better for the new people and worse for the existing people.