A more positive-sum view is that the US is bringing the rest of the world up in science every time it exports a PhD.
The isolationist and xenophobic rhetoric of recent years is mostly a reaction to a growing sense that increasingly few Americans are benefiting from global goodwill and development. While I dont agree with the sentiment, its not entirely incorrect to describe such relationships are parasitic more then symbiotic when they become increasingly one-sided. Why should Americans be exporting PHDs to other countries when they dont seem to be reaping the benefits?
Nevertheless responding to your question:
>Contrary to common perceptions, US technology benefits from these graduates' work even if they leave: though the US share of global patent citations to graduates' science drops from 70% to 50% after migrating, it remains five times larger than the destination country share
That is, very much, a substantial form of payment.
US education must be in a woeful state because that is the definition of export.
Given the exclusivity and value of the service you'd think you'd want to hang on to it, but I guess xenophobia is one thing that is more important than money.
"they" as in the USA or its people?
Germany has taxpayer-subsidized education even for foreign students. They may stay, the may leave. One of its views is that the time the student spent in the country helps foster cultural ties and understanding, and generates goodwill towards the country...
I suppose "goodwill" is hard to translate to cold hard cash, so America doesn't really like it ;-)
> The isolationist and xenophobic rhetoric of recent years is mostly a reaction to a growing sense that increasingly few Americans are benefiting from global goodwill and development
"Increasingly few Americans are" getting to evade the consequence of wealth concentration and monopolies. Large parts of the US economy have been starved by monopolist practices in the past decennia. I recently linked a very approachable documentary¹ from ARTE, in thee parts, if you want to understand what is really happening.
1. https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/103517-001-A/capitalism-in-ame...
Bit of a shame for the hassle though, the documentary is very good and the topics it touches are rarely highlighted. So give it an other try.
I'm not sure I buy your claim that this is the reason for the rhetoric. And if you're right that this is the reason for the rhetoric, it's extremely flawed reasoning.
Of course it's incorrect, but without the diminishing material conditions, it's a lot harder to get people to drum up the energy to be racist.
And imagined diminishing material conditions are just as effective as actual diminishing material conditions!
Is that what we’re calling the $8-9 TRILLION spent killing millions of people across the world from the failed “Global War or Terror?”
Tell me where all this goodwill and development is happening
That "growing sense" is not growing organically, it's being energetically fertilized. The problem isn't that most Americans aren't benefiting from global goodwill and development, it's that they aren't benefiting from domestic development. And the minority who are benefiting disproportionately from domestic economic growth are expending significant resources to convince everybody else that the problem lies with the rest of the world.
I think the rhetoric is the cause, not the response to that sense (besides the obvious feedback loop). Internationalism created a world of unprecendented - literally in human history - freedom, peace and prosperity. You can see what things look like with even the beginnings of nationalism.
I know the hackernews audience skews more affluent and wealthy, with demographics pulling from more developed coastal cities, but the vast majority of citizens do not exist in such living conditions. Focusing entirely on the development an prosperity of only a handful of our cities is what has created the perfect fertile soil for Xenophobia to grow. I dont see the rhetoric as the cause, just the motions of opportunists taking advantage of a situation that we are all at fault for. Despite all the freedom, peace, and prosperity, its so unevenly distributed that many citizens live in squalor rivaling some destitute underdeveloped nations.
In fact, a huge number of the people that are in that class would resent you for classifying them in this way. And the same is true for those in the upper middle class, or elites.
Secondly, trying to scope the xenophobia problem to just the working class is itself a bit of a misdirection. Plenty of that comes from the swaths of upper middle class white collar folks. And plenty of it comes from second gen immigrants who are eager to be counted among the natives.
The xenophobia _is_ the substitute American culture provides as a filler for the vacuum left by the lack of any sort of class identity. Everybody falls over themselves demonstrating how they can be "more American" in one way or the other. Who is a "real" American, what their qualities are, whether this particular thing or that particular thing is more or less American, etc. etc.
It's an alternate focus to direct all that shame the culture demands from the poor.
Obviously, any hopes evaporated with China’s heavy-handed approach to Hong Kong.
It has upskilled academia in those countries, but we also lost talent who could have remained here.
You hit the nail on the head on developing countries not being as poor anymore, and opportunties proliferating which reduces the pull factor, but there are a decent amount of academics and professionals who would gladly work in the US if given the opportunity and it wasn't such a headache.