America just doesn't attract (or retain) the best. Opportunities are quite high in other countries for them to consider American immigration nonsense.
In a survey of scientists from 16 countries <http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...>, the US is the top destination from 13 of the 15 others and the #2 choice from the other two. If you are a Canadian scientist, there is a 16% chance <https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the...> that you will move to the US. That's not "16% of all Canadian scientists that move out of the country move to the US". Let me repeat: 16% of all Canadian scientists move to the US. They're also likely to be among the top Canadian scientists, too.
I find it utterly baffling that the US is in a position to easily absorb the best and brightest from other countries, and yet shoots itself in the foot with ridiculously restrictive immigration policies.
Sadly, neither side wants to negotiate. On the Federal Dems side reform on skilled immigration needs to also be lumped with undocumented immigrant reform, and on the Federal GOP side due to some semblance of racism plus opposition to negotiating over undocumented immigration. I sadly speak from experience working on this.
Silver lining, just about every other country sucks as skilled immigration as well. But on the negative side, skilled professionals in Israel+India+PRC+SK+ASEAN increasingly prefer to stay put over being in immigration limbo.
[0] - https://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/nancy-pelosi-immigrat...
American cars can't compete with Asian or German cars. No engineers.
American homes aren't built for efficiency. No engineers.
American semiconductor and hardware tech is powered by immigrants. If/When they leave because of backlogged immigration, the companies will see more competition. Already America is resorting to sanctioning Chinese semi companies because American companies can't compete.
American software industry is powered by h1b slaves who can get deported by BS American laws themselves.
America is out of doctors and nurses too.
The only thing America succeeds at is financial engineering and management enriching itself.
Baffling!
Roughly speaking, developed countries want to welcome the immigrants who would contribute to the economy and reject the ones who would be a burden. But it's difficult to achieve that with a single set of policies and a single immigration authority. Usually you end up either encouraging or discouraging immigration categorically. Either the culture in the immigration authority leans towards accepting anyone who could plausibly meet the criteria, or it's constantly looking for excuses to reject any application. Most countries tend to choose the latter.
I agree. The last time we've seen a similar parity in R&D capacity was probably the 1950s-1960s.
That said, a lot of discourse around geopolitical rivalries is kind of stuck in a pre-1990s mindset. Even at its worst, countries with actual military disputes continue to be closely economically connected and (excluding Russia over the past year) we haven't seen the kind of economic decoupling that we saw in the 1970s-90s globally.
So long as nations globally maintain diplomatic contact and continue to be connected via diasporas and economic relations, there is always an off-ramp for political disputes.
P.S. Do NOT quote Russia as a counter example to my final example. Russia has been under severe EU+USA sanctions since 2014. The only difference is that these sanctions did not extend to Belarus until 2022, which was used as a backdoor to maintain EU-Russia economic relations.