Eh, what? Not only is this acknowledged as reasonable in many countries, it's policy.

The anti-immigration sentiment often seen in the US (sometimes even on HN), and in a lot of European countries seems to say otherwise.

There isn't much anti-immigration sentiment in the US. What we have in the US is anti illegal immigration sentiment.

In terms of European countries there was an article about a week ago regarding Americans going to Germany for free college. The Germans were hoping they'd stay.

I think people worry about the quality of immigrants. We want more young Sergei Brins and fewer middle aged guys with a sixth grade education.

While that may be technically true, AFAIK it's hard for someone to immigrate to the US. If I wanted to move to the US tomorrow, I believe it would involve me having to get a job before I got there.

One could argue that saying that you're against illegal immigration and making legal immigration very difficult is the same as saying that you don't really want immigration.

We have over a million legal immigrants a year, so even if you can't get in easily somehow a whole lot of other people are managing.

Well, some countries have a pretty open immigration policy because of low population grow.