A quarter of all the billion dollar+ US startups had founders who were on student/work visas at some point. If you include founders who are born of work immigrant parents that number will only go up.
Just imagine all the technology, jobs and wealth created by just SpaceX, Google, Tesla alone.
Retail investors can't purchase shares of SpaceX. Nearly anyone on Earth can purchase shares of Google and Tesla, and we all benefit from the knock on effects of their technology.
And yet only Americans have to compete for housing and jobs in this context.
I ask you once again, why would I lose anything if Tesla was in the UAE?
> ask you once again, why would I lose anything if Tesla was in the UAE?
Tesla employs 120,000 people in the US, not to mention all the federal, state, local, SS and Medicare taxes paid. Tesla employees, especially early ones, also had their stock options grow huge, building US wealth and increasing taxes owed and paid.
That is a reasonable counter argument, however I would argue that that is no longer a benefit for the American public.
Similar to how our country effectively relocated our entire manufacturing sector to the entire world (to externalize the environmental impact), only to enforce it with gunboat diplomacy to ensure that only the profits make their way home, I don't see any benefit in having the jobs located on US soil.
Politicians will say that there is a good reason to have the jobs here, but there isn't. It is much better for everyone if we just tax the owners of the company when they exercise their shares (something probably has to be done about the loaning loophole).
America should be a nation of suburban houses, spread quite far apart from each other, of people mostly working from home. Anything else is a legitimate nuissance.
If there such a thing as American exceptionalism, if the USA has an edge, it is immigration. Without it, our demographic future is cooked. So, that’s why.
> If there such a thing as American exceptionalism, if the USA has an edge, it is immigration
You’re conflating cause and effect. The U.S. has had high immigration because it’s exceptional, not the other way around. The U.S. GDP/capita was head and shoulders above everyone except Great Britain by 1801: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/bdvazr/top.... That was before even the German mass migration.
Why can't existing American businesses invest in these individuals while they live abroad, and then the US government can tax the profits the investors make?
Why must it be that they must live here, taking desk jobs and barista jobs from Americans? How many hundreds of thousands of Shockleys got their start working as baristas, nurses, and mechanics (yes I know they are not H1B)? Do you believe that any American who fails to compete with the entire world deserves it? Why can't I move to India and become Shockley over there?
Everything you mention also happens. American investors invest abroad, American companies hire abroad, increasingly Americans even leave the US to found companies abroad. This is all fine, I guess, if you want the money and the jobs and the innovation to leave the US.
What are we really arguing about, though? I don't think there's meaningful disagreement about fixing visa abuses. Disagreement about how to fix them, yes, but not about whether they need to be fixed. So assuming a world where H-1Bs work as intended and bring only the most capable people, not baristas or even low-level IT, to the US, is that still a problem for you?
Personally, I like the idea of a country where the smartest people from around the world come together and do amazing things. Contra rayiner, this is exactly how the modern tech industry was born, and it's been a driving force of the US economy for decades. It's a mystery to me how anyone who wants America to maintain its status in the world can think giving up ground here to Europe or India or China is a good idea. The second-order effects will make your life worse, not better.
