[alexanderstears]

The nature of your disagreement is what people mean by "America first".

You probably take it to mean natural American leadership in business / science.

Others - those who probably identify more with the statement - take it to mean that America should put its domestic interests first. Now, denying visas to entrepreneurs probably would be a policy that harms American interests but it's not high up the list and the dissident rightists have an incentive to mess up immigration as much as possible - it'll give them a better position to renegotiate an immigration system.

I think the primary problem with our immigration system is that both sides represent corporate interests in that they want a companies to have access to inexpensive workers and so we get problems like H1-B that make it difficult for H1-B workers to change employers or negotiate a higher salary / better position.

The other problem is that people with left-wing sympathies want an immigration system that works better for people who aren't poised to do skilled work and they know that they can't cut separate deals on skilled immigration and unskilled immigration because unskilled immigration isn't as politically desirable.

Blame uneducated voters, sure. But there's a reason we're not doing the thing that's clearly right here and it's not because of Trump's base.