[zaptheimpaler]

This is probably for the best in the long term. They've added enough friction, insanity and disdain for foreigners that no sane person will immigrate and we can start to build stronger industries and trade relationships outside the US.

[hermannj314]

From what I could understand from the 6-page memorandum, (my paraphrase) "the law allows us to be nice and convenient, but doesn't require us to be nice and convenient, so we decided to make things hard and cruel going forward"

The current administration is sending a pretty clear message to immigrants.

[epistasis]

How is this good in any way?

How could this ever help to build stronger industries or trade relationships?

If somebody hands you a shit sandwich you don't need to pretend it tastes good.

[zaptheimpaler]

It will help would-be immigrants understand that the US does not want them and that it would be a mistake to invest time and energy trying to build a future in a country that hates them and can nuke their lives at the drop of a hat. It will help other countries that are not the US retain their talent and build up their own industries. A greater diversity in distribution of talent and industry across the world is a more resilient system.

[digitaltrees]

It’s not a more resilient system. It creates geographic isolation and friction. It dilutes the talent pool instead of concentrating it which limits cross pollination. It also reduces specialization that drives efficiency and lets each country focus on what it does best and then trade with others.

[elzbardico]

Specialization is for insects. And on the contrary of what you say the real world show plenty of reasons to diversify: For example, the success of China with renewables and EVs shows exactly that:

Every single EV company in the US wanted to be like Tesla, it was like an idée fixe, most of them failed miserably compared to BYD.

[digitaltrees]

There are decades of economic research based on hundreds of years of economic activity that contradicts your analysis.

EV and solar investments in the United States were on par with and exceeding china, they were gutted after republicans attacked the solindra investment for political reasons.

China is itself moving up the value chain and specializing.

That being said, I do think we have learned the hard way that outsourcing manufacturing destroys the ecosystem and supply chain that drives innovation. Simply put, invention happens where the work is being done

[goodluckchuck]

I think that’s a bit dramatic saying the US hates them, but yes to your other point. The US is taking the position that it has more to gain from having strong and prosperous trading partners than it does from exploiting those nations and draining them of talent.

[vidarh]

If you read "US as a whole", then sure. I've met many a lot of very friendly people in the US, some of whome I'd love to visit again.

If you read "the current US administration and their voter base" it sure feels like hate.

I used to visit the US a lot. I haven't been for a long time and as long as the current regime remains in place I'll spend my time and money in places where I can be sure not to be mistreated.

That's not because I fear I would be hated in the places I would actually visit, but because I have no interest in being at the mercy of US immigration. It doesn't matter that the risk isn't great - it is high enough and the potential consequences severe enough that it's put the US in the same category as high crime third world countries for me in terms of risk.

Already 20 years ago it was more stressful to go through immigration in the US, even as a white man from a rich country, than in dictatorships like China. As it stands now, I wouldn't hesitate to visit China, but I would hesitate to even transit the US.

[RamenJunkie_]

Except the US isn't trying to make strong trading partners, its a side effect of the xenophobia and racism. If anything they are alienating anyone who would ever trade because every trade deal for something benign like, steel or whatever will include some random unrelated bull shit like "also if you want to trade you have to round up your trans people."

[zaptheimpaler]

Yeah look at like any one of the 10,000 things this administration, Trump, Miller, republicans have said about immigrants. Look at ICE detention centres, how many hundreds or thousands of people have literally died, denied basic medical care or humane conditions, ICE agents who executed US citizens facing 0 consequences. ICE agents on camera ramming a car, radioing in to say that the car rammed them, and then shooting the driver. Cold-blooded execution. I could go on forever. Tell me again how stating that they hate immigrants is being dramatic.

It’s just facts but they’ve been boiling the frog and doing so many idiotic and horrific things at once that people have completely checked out.

[drivingmenuts]

It could be good for anyone country that's not the US (despite our hubris, we're not actually the center of the universe). But for the US, a country built on immigrants ands immigration, probably not so much. We fucked around, we found out.

Well, we're continuing to find out. We haven't exactly scraped rocked bottom yet.

[RamenJunkie_]

They mean good for everyone NOT the US. Because now say, Germany or France, or where ever, come off as a better place to immigrate, so other countries can build stronger more competitice businesses.

This move, like everything the MAGA administration does, will only weaken the US.

Even better for other countries, anyone the US produces who isn't a raging idiot, also are more likely to want to immigrate from the US.

[throw-the-towel]

Sorry but "France" and "build businesses" in the same sentence is insane.

[hiddencost]

I think the parent is saying it's good because immigrants will go elsewhere and the US will continue to decline. Which will be good for humanity.

[BrokenCogs]

I think it's sarcasm

[rayiner]

Isn’t it better for the smart people in India to stay there and make India richer, instead of coming to the U.S. to make billionaires here richer? These countries absolutely suffer from the brain drain.

[gyomu]

In many cases a talented/smart person will bring little to zero value to a country with ossified institutions, but huge value to one with the right systems in place to build value.

[ViktorRay]

This is a really good way of stating it. Thank you.

[zaptheimpaler]

Yes exactly. One country sucking up all the best talent is not good for the world, its a single point of failure.

[airstrike]

That's not really how it works. Immigrants also benefit from coming to the US.

Skilled labor immigration is great for everyone involved, and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain.

But it's not zero-sum. The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity.

[Longlius]

>bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain

Except those countries continue to decline and eventually become a global issue. India is on the cusp of a water crisis which is going to turn into a massive refugee crisis - how different would the situation and institutions be if the top 10% of the population hadn't been siphoned off?

[airstrike]

It likely wouldn't be meaningfully different, and we don't set immigration policy in the US to help countries abroad.

Or would you rather condemn me to life in a corrupt, dangerous country even though I have everything it takes to build great things and make the lives of other humans better?

That moral argument against immigration, especially coming from an American, is DOA.

And from the perspective of the home countries, you're basically telling whoever happened to be born in a shithole that their only choice is to fix it themselves.

[rayiner]

> and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain.

That's a pretty big qualifier!

> The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity

Isn't it the opposite? Creating wealth and technology in India helps a billion quite poor people. Creating wealth in the U.S. helps 300 million already rich people.

[airstrike]

Except you can't create Google in India. Google isn't minted by divine inspiration hitting a couple of smart guys in a garage.

It's created by an entire ecosystem that allows a project like that to be conceived and executed in such a way that has benefited the entire world, including the poor in India.

It's a big qualifier, but like I said, it's not zero-sum.

No economist will argue that limiting skilled labor immigration (or any immigration, really!) is an optimal policy for improving the lives of the poor elsewhere. It just doesn't work that way.

[zaptheimpaler]

That's why I said long term. This logic might as well argue it would be better for China to have had huge immigration to the US 50 years ago and contribute to the manufacturing or automobile industries there. But they didn't, and now they've built up their own ecosystems instead that are more efficient and ahead of the US' ecosystems. You can create Google in India or BYD in China, it just takes time for the ecosystem to build. It has helped China at least, and maybe the world more than if they had immigrated en masse.

The other line of argument is again the fault-tolerance I mentioned above, maybe see Taleb or distributed systems. Maximizing efficiency has trade-offs in resiliency. Yes it might be less efficient for there to be 3 ecosystems in 3 countries instead of 1, but its more resilient to shocks. We saw the risks of highly efficient but single point of failure supply chains materialize just a few years ago during the pandemic.

It's also pretty obvious that the tech companies being in the US benefits the US more than other countries. The big salaries are in the bay area, the tax revenue goes to the US, all the ex-Googlers founding new companies found them in the US etc.. So of course Google being founded in country X would benefit country X more than it being founded in the US.

[rayiner]

I doubt its better for India to have Indians making Google richer than to have them staying in India to make something even a fraction of the size of Google in India. How is India going to create that ecosystem if all the smart people leave?

[digitaltrees]

This is the correct answer. Concentration of talent creates cross pollination and collaborative learning. The innovation is then exported.

[digitaltrees]

The innovations immigrants created in the UK during the Industrial Revolution made everyone wealthier. The innovations made by Immigrants in in Silicon Valley have made the world more wealthy. And it was in part due to the concentrated talent pool that made it possible.

[hibikir]

The way it works is that the origin country is worse off when people leave, but in general immigrants are much better off for moving, and it's not even close.

A big argument for letting people emigrate is that they owe no real debt to the county where they are born, or the city, or anything like that. They aren't selfs owned by a nobleman. If moving increases their personal lot, why should we stop them?

[ViktorRay]

The problem with this thinking is assuming that countries are equivalent in terms of opportunity and life.

India does not have the same opportunities that America does to have a good and successful life. This isn’t just due to the country being relatively poor but due to structural issues along with corruption. Then there are other issues too. Environmental issues. Too many issues to list.

It’s disingenuous to suggest that a families or individuals should stay behind to change this. Also isnt it a loss for everyone? If smart people come to America and take advantage of opportunities and accomplish things that help many people what good is it to say no to this. That they must stay in the home country and inevitably not accomplish as much due to all these issues. Even if Elon Musk and Jensen Huang had stayed in their home countries they certainly could not have accomplished the same amount they did in America. Both South Africa and Taiwan in that period lacked the opportunities.

Also what is the rationale behind an American saying to people not to come to America and improve it but to stay back? Individual Indians aren’t any different from individual Americans beyond their accent. The children of these immigrants are indistinguishable from Americans who have been here for generations (aside from skin color). I really don’t understand why Americans wouldn’t want the brain gain from having smart people come here. Also if a surgeon is operating on you would you care what skin color or accent they had? Doesn’t make sense to me.

[rayiner]

> Also isnt it a loss for everyone?

No, it’s a win for the people who remain in India. Imagine if the Samsung founder had moved to the U.S. instead of founding Samsung in Korea.

> Individual Indians aren’t any different from individual Americans beyond their accent. The children of these immigrants are indistinguishable from Americans who have been here for generations

Maybe some, but on average no. My family is Bangladeshi and my wife’s family is pre-Revolutionary War American and the cultural gap is vast. Basic attitudes towards justice, freedom, order, civic responsibilities, time, family relations, money, government, food, etc., are completely different.

Concrete example: Bangladeshis places tremendous emphasis on formal education and credentials. Americans have a tradition of skepticism of those things. This difference persists even among American born Desis.

There is evidence to back this up. Cultural differences persist for generations in immigrants: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...

[cheinic6493]

> Isn’t it better for the smart people in India to stay there and make India richer, instead of coming to the U.S. to make billionaires here richer?

An Indian’s greatest accomplishment in life is leaving India.