> US must own the outcome of allocating those slots internationally and the resulting under-employment of its domestic population

Slots are being cut across the board. For international students as well as domestic ones. Also, we’re talking about a couple hundred seats. And again, of graduate students.

> Whether these slots should be finite or not

They’re grad students. Extremely skilled. Artisanly trained, pretty much. There are fundamental limits on how many we can productively have. I’m guessing none at MIT are wasted.