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I don't think jedberg's point is that we have a responsibility to make things better in other countries. Rather, I think the point is that if we only focus on indicators of "merit" that correlate with wealth we'll miss out on valuable, smart people who want to come to the US from a less wealthy background.

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I think they are using “skills” as a proxy for wealth. As such this poor person with skills to them is being proxied as “wealthy”. Our system doesn’t care. We care that they have skills to bring to the table.

generally most merit systems use education as a proxy for "skills" and jedberg is (aptly) noting that this is generally a proxy for wealth and not for capability/skills across the broader populace.

Let’s say that ends up being the case. It’s their govs responsibility to set up programs to promote those people to us, not ours to hunt them down.

I don’t see why it’s our responsibility to do “equal opportunity” to a foreign population we have no responsibility for. We have this responsibility for our own population, yes, but others are out of scope completely.

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