> and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain.

That's a pretty big qualifier!

> The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity

Isn't it the opposite? Creating wealth and technology in India helps a billion quite poor people. Creating wealth in the U.S. helps 300 million already rich people.

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airstrike an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Except you can't create Google in India. Google isn't minted by divine inspiration hitting a couple of smart guys in a garage.

It's created by an entire ecosystem that allows a project like that to be conceived and executed in such a way that has benefited the entire world, including the poor in India.

It's a big qualifier, but like I said, it's not zero-sum.

No economist will argue that limiting skilled labor immigration (or any immigration, really!) is an optimal policy for improving the lives of the poor elsewhere. It just doesn't work that way.

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rayiner 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I doubt its better for India to have Indians making Google richer than to have them staying in India to make something even a fraction of the size of Google in India. How is India going to create that ecosystem if all the smart people leave?

	▲	airstrike 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's better to not frame this in terms of a specific country, lest it come across as if we're picking on India specifically. Developing countries have structural reasons for why they are underdeveloped. This is a very complicated topic, and one for which there is no shortage of academic interest. I suggest starting from William Easterly's "The Elusive Quest for Growth". I quote here from the book review MIT Press: > What is necessary for growth is that government incentives induce investment in collective goods like education, health, and the rule of law

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digitaltrees 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

This is the correct answer. Concentration of talent creates cross pollination and collaborative learning. The innovation is then exported.

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digitaltrees 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

The innovations immigrants created in the UK during the Industrial Revolution made everyone wealthier. The innovations made by Immigrants in in Silicon Valley have made the world more wealthy. And it was in part due to the concentrated talent pool that made it possible.