Irrelevant image: migration destinations of Chinese to the US, generated by NYT
Debate on immigrant workers is still running on the New York Times' Room for Debate. While the original topic, as I understand it, should be centred around the H-1B visa as an excuse for cheap labour, many of the authors actually take the liberty to warn the US of the danger of losing foreign talents, and consequently, losing her global technological competitiveness.
Whether that debate on NYT is off-topic or not is not my concern. My take on the debate is that if we look at the problem at hand up-side-down, that is, if we ask, 'Is it normal for the US to amass all the talents this world has to offer?' the answer should be quite clear. It is like a permanent trade surplus/deficit which has just proven by the current crisis to be quite impossible.
Why? Because existing American workers (supposedly not as competitive as some of their immigrant counterparts) will not just disappear. Worse still, unlike unemployment in a structural change of the economy, the kind of American workers we are talking about will continue to be born! Now this begins to sound a bit social Darwinian, and I assure you that I will not go down that route. I just wish to make the case clear, that with no ethical way of removing a certain number of the American citizenship, and as the speed of technology cannot keep up with the rate of population growth once high-skilled labour begins pouring in, the US will not be able to retain all the talents coming out of the US higher education system. And since a good number of these talents do not enjoy the same rights as an American citizen does (as has been made apparent in the debate at NYT), they naturally will choose to return to their home country.
So it is about time that we say 'Sorry' to the ideal US which no longer exists. If the market for talents were so biased towards the US, it is now beginning to clear. Any other way out? Yes, when free immigration is realized (a time when national borders cease to exist), we will all be better-off, except that by then it will be meaningless to speak about a 'global technological lead'.
Why so extreme? Why do I mess about national borders? Because within these borders, people are born with certain rights the outsiders do not enjoy. American vs non-American, urban household vs rural household (as in China)... People are not born equal. And since it is not politically right to say that someone is superior to another as a human being, displacement of the right-holders by non-right-holders will be impossible. The 'most' equal method is to let the population within the border grow; and the result is that some people can get a better life by qualification, while some will get it by birth.
In the advanced countries, nowadays, city growth has slowed down, and there is trend of migration back to the countryside. I would suggest that this is a better world, at least better than the swelling big cities in the past. Maybe this will happen on a global level, as well. In order to solve the problem of 'the immigration of high-skilled workers', some Americans will have to go. In a social-Darwinian way the goers are those at the bottom of the social ladder; in a more ethical way, it could be the richest guys. Either way, being an American will not be that important any more. Sadly the current debate seems to insist on the unviolatable rights of the Americans, and is too politically correct to become social-Darwinian, while too reluctant to let the elite get out of the US.
I have actually concealed one solution. According to economic theory, instead of amassing factors of production, the real advantage of a country should lie in the progress of its productivity, or level of technology, or (very unfortunately) randomness in the equation! Productivity is a black box, but it does point to the fair solution:
Educate the existing US citizens so they over-perform most of their foreign counterparts, and the US will always lead. Immigration is always a cheap way to excellence, and it is good that the Americans have already realized that the current cheap plan does not work.
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