I've seen firsthand the waits and the bureaucracy of some of these immigration documents.
I can tolerate waiting; while frustrating, that's not the real issue. But it's hard to just live a normal life in limbo, with all the implicit threats. Your documents are tied to your job, so switching jobs will risk, at minimum, starting from scratch; and there is a chance of denial and deportation at every turn. You are also not immune to layoffs, so this can blow up in your face without warning, giving you a very short period of time to fix it. And in the end, even if you survive all the hoop jumps, there is still a chance you will be denied the documents that you've been waiting years to receive.
Compare this to somebody just wanting to do essentially the same work in their home country, where they probably can, minus all the bullshit. This is why the U.S. is in danger: because immigrants can only take so much, and at some point, they simply will move all their ideas and capital back home.
But it's hard to just live a normal life in limbo, with all the implicit threats.
Do immigrants have in all cases a home country to go back to with a better trade-off in this regard than the United States? As long as some countries are sufficiently lousily governed, the United States will always have a ready supply of some kinds of immigrants. The article's point is correct that persons who are able to set up new businesses with new technologies probably have better capacity to shop for a country to live in than most migrants.
Yes, but some previously lousily governed countries like China and India have become much better options than they were even ten years ago. The goal is not to have "some kinds of immigrants", it is to have the best.
Not to mention that many of the "best" immigrants (i.e. highly trained, highly educated) have come from first-world industrialized nations to begin with. Political instability and threat of mortal danger is not the only thing that compels people to move.
I can tolerate waiting; while frustrating, that's not the real issue. But it's hard to just live a normal life in limbo, with all the implicit threats. Your documents are tied to your job, so switching jobs will risk, at minimum, starting from scratch; and there is a chance of denial and deportation at every turn. You are also not immune to layoffs, so this can blow up in your face without warning, giving you a very short period of time to fix it. And in the end, even if you survive all the hoop jumps, there is still a chance you will be denied the documents that you've been waiting years to receive.
Compare this to somebody just wanting to do essentially the same work in their home country, where they probably can, minus all the bullshit. This is why the U.S. is in danger: because immigrants can only take so much, and at some point, they simply will move all their ideas and capital back home.