Definitely a famous story that gets retold and almost mythologized in China. When I taught over there, several different middle school students independently told me about this story.
I had a friend working at a startup I interned at who had come over on a student visa, gotten a temporary visa to work, but then eventually was not able to keep it and ended up moving to Canada and working there. It's never made sense to me why we'd want to kick people out after they've received education here; if anything, it would make more sense to require them to work here for a bit after (although I'd also probably be opposed to that because I generally just don't like treating people as cogs in a working machine).
Immigration views tend to track who the immigrants seemingly threaten, so sites like HN tend to have the views about H1-Bs[0] that working-class people have about working-class immigrants (illegal or otherwise).
It'll be interesting to see if America can reverse this trend. Our ability to be a sink for global talent has been a massive boost to America's success. The funny thing is that there will be no substitute should America falter. The rising powers are not as immigrant friendly. There are as many foreigners in tiny Taiwan as in mighty China. What might well happen is that the particular combination of human agglomeration, relatively free markets, and a diverse society might just be lost and with it all the human productivity that came with it.
This is absolutely true. In college I remember going out with girls from various different countries. Made friends with tons of folks from all over the world.
I guess you might see a bit of that in London or a handful of other European countries, but nothing on the same scale.
But you could argue from a business point of view you can get everyone on a zoom call anyway.
If I can hire someone in Malaysia for 1/10th of an American, why wouldn't I do that.
> It's never made sense to me why we'd want to kick people out after they've received education here;
That was (probably) never anyone's intention, American representative democracy is just schizophrenic by design. For the same reason the US has never faithfully abided by any treaty, laws and policies rarely end up functioning as intended after the political process.
I don't disagree, although I've also found that I'm often surprised by what people actually think is reasonable policy, and immigration in particular seems to evoke opinions that seem absurd to me but are held by a large enough number of people that I have trouble fathoming.
Kind of a non-issue when we won't let them stay. I know several Chinese nationals who: received STEM degrees in the US, really wanted to stay, but struggled to get a visa and ended up back in China.
How many geniuses are leaving the US right now due to Xenophobia?