> American STEM education seems to objectively be doing pretty well in terms of Nobel prizes, scholarly journal articles, patents, technology product revenue, etc.

I hate to break it to you, but a lot of our most valuable research is produced by people who did their primary education outside the US. Just go to a STEM research lab at any US university connected to a Nobel prize or Fields medal in the last 10-20 years, and it will be almost completely made up of internationally educated students / professors / etc.

If someone is curious about this data, I made a little analysis a while ago - Nobel Prize in numbers: https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/nobel-prize-in-numbers/#sec...

Yes, they are getting visas via academia employment.