Exactly this. And these talents are both sufficiently scarce, valuable and not included in o1 visas that it makes sense to expand h1b by 10x

I mean, we also break a lot of PhD programs because due to glut of foreign workers, the work environment is hell. I've known several citizens who dropped out because it was 996 type environment and since they didn't need to visa to remain in the US, they could just move on.

Clipping a green card to every PhD is probably political non starter. As American, I'd be very leery of such a scheme.

What does it mean to "break a lot of PhD programs"? Research is competitive, and hard work. Yeah, there are easier options, but in the long run, the countries with the people willing to work their butts off academically are going to outperform ours if we can't get their best to come here and work their butts off here.

>Clipping a green card to every PhD is probably political non starter. As American, I'd be very leery of such a scheme.

There is actually bipartisan support for trying to make it easier for PhDs to stay - both parties have repeatedly introduced legislation to help with that - but it seems to keep getting derailed by arguments about other aspects of immigration reform.

"break a lot of PhD programs" meaning PhD look less attractive day by day for citizens while relying on foreign money to stay afloat because funding is no longer available.

Maybe you disagree and I never considered getting a PhD but from what I understand, the workload has gone from hard to insane. If you are saying PhD only work with 18 hour days, 7 days a week, alright I guess.

>There is actually bipartisan support for trying to make it easier for PhDs to stay - both parties have repeatedly introduced legislation to help with that - but it seems to keep getting derailed by arguments about other aspects of immigration reform.

BTW, I've seen the legislation, it gets derailed a ton because many voters, myself included, believe it would just backdoor into Universities happily taking money for people to get PhD in low demand subjects to get the green card.

I think those proposals are usually scoped to science/tech PhDs, I guess to avoid that scenario, but I only have a headline-level knowledge of the bills. I don't know if it's that insane at most labs? But my first/second hand knowledge is a decade out of date at this point.