The report itself is interesting [0] and I recommend reading it for good context.
Here's a couple things that stood out to me:
- Measuring net migration is difficult. The report from TFA estimates a net migration between –295,000 and -10,000 for 2025. Some reports estimate much lower numbers, and some reports actually estimated a positive net migration for 2025. In any case, it's certainly trending downward.
- While there *has* been a decrease in the number of green cards and work visas (H1B's), it seems that the majority of the drop off has been from refusing to take refugees (from ~100k in 2024 to ~10k in 2025), basically eliminating asylum petitions at the border (from ~1.4M in 2024 to ~70k in 2025), and reduction in "Entries without inspection", aka illegal crossings that do not encounter law enforcement (~270,000k in 2024 to ~30k in 2025)
Given these numbers, I'm actually surprised the estimated net migration wasn't lower. I'm not sure if there's another component that made up for it, or if their estimates are just on the conservative side.
You’re understating it by only mentioning Silicon Valley. I’ve worked with lots of great people from all over the world who brought their talents and education here to be productive in our economy, and I’ve never stepped one foot in Silicon Valley. We’ve become an embarrassment.
That's like saying "a lot of Silicon Valley's success is attributable to people." It's not a useful statement without specificity.
Key Silicon Valley companies like Fairchild and Hewlett-Packard were founded during the highly restrictive immigration policy that prevailed between the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act and the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act. Intel was founded just a few years after. A lot of golden age Silicon Valley companies were founded around or shortly after 1970, when the U.S. foreign-born population hit the lowest point in American history, under 5%.
Of course, even during that period, we allowed in German scientists, leading professors, etc. It's a handful of people. The highly selective immigration policy that prevailed from 1924-1965 is likely a key reason why so many Silicon Valley companies were founded by immigrants. That has very little to do with this story, which is about reversing mass immigration.
I've always been curious if it matters as much as people claim, or if the funding will just go to someone else with a similar result. We'll get to see if this becomes the new normal.
> if the funding will just go to someone else with a similar result
To Americans? They're being outcompeted for this funding despite having many significant advantages over the people they're competing with. I think it would be naive to expect people starting from a position of strength and getting outcompeted nonetheless to achieve "similar results" when given funding.
Is Silicon Valley a success? I would argue it has been an abject failure on culture and society at large. It has generated money for people by stealing every bit of data it can, but that really isnt success but for the few who can put theor fingers on that money stream. It has provided little past doomscrolling and narcissism fodder.
This is overhyped by a lot. A lot of SV grift is attributable to exploited immigrants, too, it's not like it's a city of moral champions.
H1B and other employment based immigration programs are some of the worst influences on the market, because people get screwed, wages suppressed for non immigrant workers, and the donor class for the uniparty are the ones paying for the status quo, and a big reason nothing ever gets fixed.
I'm not a big fan of defacto indentured servitude or a lot of the crap people end up saddled with under the schemes immigration middlemen and agencies come up with to skim off wages, take government funding, and other grifts.
I'm a big fan of success stories too, but those are almost always in spite of the immigration policies.
The current CEO's of Alphabet, MSFT, Nvidia, Uber, IBM, Adobe, AMD and many more are themselves immigrants.
There was an article from last year about Meta's AI lab, claiming all top researchers were foreigners. If you look into the research teams in any of the big tech companies you will see they are riddled with people born abroad. It turns out if you want the best in the world, many won't be American born.
Its not just about standard H1B's working in normal SWE roles. Immigrants hold key roles at key companies in SV and have a disproportionate influence on tech's direction. I agree with parent that we should be careful what we wish for.
That's more of a damning indictment of the American education system than praise of immigration. I'm not a fan of autarky in general but it seems reasonable that a country should be self-sufficient in smart people.
Its not intended as praise, but a reality-check on the status quo.
Our leadership in science and tech has always been linked inextricably with sourcing talent from everywhere. You can look at immigrant Nobels, patents, enrollment in doctoral programs, representation in executive teams in tech companies, % of American unicorns founded by immigrants -- it will point to the same conclusion.
Whether or not we should be self-sufficient is another matter, but we aren't even close, not in the highest echelons of STEM.
I'm curious though, what country would serve as evidence that sourcing talent domestically alone can propel a nation to global leadership in these fields?
Well, I initially had a snarky remark about Federal involvement in Silicon Valley but it seems that both Shockley and his Traitorous Eight were quite European in national origin.
Well, depending on the state, you can come into illegally America and work for below-minimum wage under the table, have several children (legal citizens through birthright citizenship) and then attain benefits on behalf of those children who, on paper, live in a household with little or no income.
None of this is made up. I grew up with several friends that had this arrangement and later in life attained citizenship, usually through military service, and told me the reality of their upbringing. It’s a complex environment.
Approximately 40-45% of _all_ US residents, natural-born or immigrant, receive more public benefits than they pay in taxes. Consider if an immigrant making a below-average wage could actually fit into both categories.
I'm not against immigration, just pointing out the flaw in your argument.
Yeah, “the science” has “found no evidence” for lots of things. And proven a lot of falsehoods. People are still walking around bullshitting bogus “The Science”. The reality is that the snail darter wasn’t some unique experience. The standard is to create papers that reflect the interests of the scientists, and to lie if required.
Given that and the Somali autism scam that is quite clearly a scam I think we’re well past “trust me, I’m an expert”
I would agree that social security recipients tend to be the biggest welfare queens. They paid a bunch of people that are now dead. And think because they "paid into" one group of dead people, that now living other people now owe them. An exercise in the logic of the insane, but yet the veneer that holds up the fiction.
It's a broke and bankrupt system, a wise person might jump the ship well before that happens.
I believe he's referring to the fact that social security, despite being billed as essentially a "retirement account" type program where e.g. silent gen paid in and got out roughly the same amount, it functions more like a ponzi scheme.
This is a consequence of the fact that, when the program was instituted, Roosevelt wanted to immediately start paying out to some people. So, boomers (very large generation) paid for their parents (relatively much smaller generation, meaning small per-person bill).
Now millennials and zoomers (relatively smaller generations) are expected to pay for boomers (much larger per-person bill). Between that, the incredible spending of medicare, and the federal propping-up of the housing market, a huge proportion of the economy has been dedicated to wealth transfer to the olds, an unproductive class who will be gone soon anyhow.
... thhat is not what I'm saying. Im describing the system by which social security bizarrely says a different person owes you because you paid someone else, most of which will be dead by the time you 'draw' it 'back'.
The dead person paid other dead people that died before them, why would that establish a debt from me to them? If the dead person got their SS back from the even deader people before them that they previously paid, I'd agree they were merely paid back what they paid into them.
Right!? I can't believe it's current year and this bigot doesn't want his country overrun with foreigners or to have a middle class lifestyle unattainable for the average man. Discusting!
Lol I am for completely open borders, which probably puts me in the most extreme 1% of pro-immigration policy.
This doesn't make me blind. The benefits liability is massive, mostly to my own citizens, whom are even harder to escape than immigrants except by emigration. My country is being run by a proto-fascist, and the only remaining benefit I get of that is that he kind of reflects my demographic, although that is rapidly being 'replaced.' So in 30 years, going down the road it is now, it could be someone just as authoritarian but sees me as the enemy instead of brown people.
I am not particularly excited to wait around for that, while paying out massive benefits to the non-productive, plus the national debt, plus the taxation rates that exceed other monarchy-like countries with even freer economic systems.
If I was anti-immigrant I wouldn't even consider immigration. I only consider it because I don't have a dogmatic allegiance to the constitution nor 'America' as a political entity; if living under a dystopic theocracy provides more liberty it shouldn't be excluded from consideration.
The main reason why I haven't left, is I'm trying real hard to not be a coward and just leave rather than try to fix things, unlike many cowardly immigrants that have arrived at the USA because they can't be bothered to fix their own country.
The report itself is interesting [0] and I recommend reading it for good context.
Here's a couple things that stood out to me:
Given these numbers, I'm actually surprised the estimated net migration wasn't lower. I'm not sure if there's another component that made up for it, or if their estimates are just on the conservative side.[0] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/macroeconomic-implication...
What happened 50 years ago to cause a major outflow?
The text says "in at least half a century"; probably they just couldn't find data for further back.
A lot of Silicon Valley’s success is attributable to immigrants. Be careful what you wish for.
You’re understating it by only mentioning Silicon Valley. I’ve worked with lots of great people from all over the world who brought their talents and education here to be productive in our economy, and I’ve never stepped one foot in Silicon Valley. We’ve become an embarrassment.
That's like saying "a lot of Silicon Valley's success is attributable to people." It's not a useful statement without specificity.
Key Silicon Valley companies like Fairchild and Hewlett-Packard were founded during the highly restrictive immigration policy that prevailed between the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act and the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act. Intel was founded just a few years after. A lot of golden age Silicon Valley companies were founded around or shortly after 1970, when the U.S. foreign-born population hit the lowest point in American history, under 5%.
Of course, even during that period, we allowed in German scientists, leading professors, etc. It's a handful of people. The highly selective immigration policy that prevailed from 1924-1965 is likely a key reason why so many Silicon Valley companies were founded by immigrants. That has very little to do with this story, which is about reversing mass immigration.
I've always been curious if it matters as much as people claim, or if the funding will just go to someone else with a similar result. We'll get to see if this becomes the new normal.
> if the funding will just go to someone else with a similar result
To Americans? They're being outcompeted for this funding despite having many significant advantages over the people they're competing with. I think it would be naive to expect people starting from a position of strength and getting outcompeted nonetheless to achieve "similar results" when given funding.
"out competed" in this context means "not willing to work for less"
Is Silicon Valley a success? I would argue it has been an abject failure on culture and society at large. It has generated money for people by stealing every bit of data it can, but that really isnt success but for the few who can put theor fingers on that money stream. It has provided little past doomscrolling and narcissism fodder.
This is overhyped by a lot. A lot of SV grift is attributable to exploited immigrants, too, it's not like it's a city of moral champions.
H1B and other employment based immigration programs are some of the worst influences on the market, because people get screwed, wages suppressed for non immigrant workers, and the donor class for the uniparty are the ones paying for the status quo, and a big reason nothing ever gets fixed.
I'm not a big fan of defacto indentured servitude or a lot of the crap people end up saddled with under the schemes immigration middlemen and agencies come up with to skim off wages, take government funding, and other grifts.
I'm a big fan of success stories too, but those are almost always in spite of the immigration policies.
The current CEO's of Alphabet, MSFT, Nvidia, Uber, IBM, Adobe, AMD and many more are themselves immigrants.
There was an article from last year about Meta's AI lab, claiming all top researchers were foreigners. If you look into the research teams in any of the big tech companies you will see they are riddled with people born abroad. It turns out if you want the best in the world, many won't be American born.
Its not just about standard H1B's working in normal SWE roles. Immigrants hold key roles at key companies in SV and have a disproportionate influence on tech's direction. I agree with parent that we should be careful what we wish for.
Found the Meta article:
https://m.economictimes.com/nri/latest-updates/no-american-g...
That's more of a damning indictment of the American education system than praise of immigration. I'm not a fan of autarky in general but it seems reasonable that a country should be self-sufficient in smart people.
Its not intended as praise, but a reality-check on the status quo.
Our leadership in science and tech has always been linked inextricably with sourcing talent from everywhere. You can look at immigrant Nobels, patents, enrollment in doctoral programs, representation in executive teams in tech companies, % of American unicorns founded by immigrants -- it will point to the same conclusion.
Whether or not we should be self-sufficient is another matter, but we aren't even close, not in the highest echelons of STEM.
I'm curious though, what country would serve as evidence that sourcing talent domestically alone can propel a nation to global leadership in these fields?
Well, I initially had a snarky remark about Federal involvement in Silicon Valley but it seems that both Shockley and his Traitorous Eight were quite European in national origin.
Federal involvement during WWII led to the founding of Silicon Valley.
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People making both the "they are a draw on the system" and "they are taking all the jobs" arguments confuse me.
You can be anti-immigration, but you should pick one.
Well, depending on the state, you can come into illegally America and work for below-minimum wage under the table, have several children (legal citizens through birthright citizenship) and then attain benefits on behalf of those children who, on paper, live in a household with little or no income.
None of this is made up. I grew up with several friends that had this arrangement and later in life attained citizenship, usually through military service, and told me the reality of their upbringing. It’s a complex environment.
Approximately 40-45% of _all_ US residents, natural-born or immigrant, receive more public benefits than they pay in taxes. Consider if an immigrant making a below-average wage could actually fit into both categories.
I'm not against immigration, just pointing out the flaw in your argument.
Why? They aren't mutually exclusive.
moving to Dubai if you believe in the constitution is just odd. I guess some people like money more than the values of equity, liberty and democracy?
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Yeah, “the science” has “found no evidence” for lots of things. And proven a lot of falsehoods. People are still walking around bullshitting bogus “The Science”. The reality is that the snail darter wasn’t some unique experience. The standard is to create papers that reflect the interests of the scientists, and to lie if required.
Given that and the Somali autism scam that is quite clearly a scam I think we’re well past “trust me, I’m an expert”
I would agree that social security recipients tend to be the biggest welfare queens. They paid a bunch of people that are now dead. And think because they "paid into" one group of dead people, that now living other people now owe them. An exercise in the logic of the insane, but yet the veneer that holds up the fiction.
It's a broke and bankrupt system, a wise person might jump the ship well before that happens.
> They paid a bunch of people that are now dead
No, they didn’t:
https://apnews.com/article/social-security-payments-deceased...
You desperately need to diversify your media diet.
I believe he's referring to the fact that social security, despite being billed as essentially a "retirement account" type program where e.g. silent gen paid in and got out roughly the same amount, it functions more like a ponzi scheme.
This is a consequence of the fact that, when the program was instituted, Roosevelt wanted to immediately start paying out to some people. So, boomers (very large generation) paid for their parents (relatively much smaller generation, meaning small per-person bill).
Now millennials and zoomers (relatively smaller generations) are expected to pay for boomers (much larger per-person bill). Between that, the incredible spending of medicare, and the federal propping-up of the housing market, a huge proportion of the economy has been dedicated to wealth transfer to the olds, an unproductive class who will be gone soon anyhow.
... thhat is not what I'm saying. Im describing the system by which social security bizarrely says a different person owes you because you paid someone else, most of which will be dead by the time you 'draw' it 'back'.
Why is this bizarre? And the dead person doesn't "owe" anyone. The dead person paid into the fund, which is what pays people.
The dead person paid other dead people that died before them, why would that establish a debt from me to them? If the dead person got their SS back from the even deader people before them that they previously paid, I'd agree they were merely paid back what they paid into them.
> It's a broke and bankrupt system, a wise person might jump the ship well before that happens.
so... tax evasion or renunciation?
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Brah, you are just straight up reprehensible with your views
Right!? I can't believe it's current year and this bigot doesn't want his country overrun with foreigners or to have a middle class lifestyle unattainable for the average man. Discusting!
Yea, I live in in immigrant nation called the United States of America.
Go re-read The New Colossus if you need to understand my views on immigration, and why I find his views reprehensible.
My demographic, American, is being replaced by people like him who are adopting Anti American views.
Lol I am for completely open borders, which probably puts me in the most extreme 1% of pro-immigration policy.
This doesn't make me blind. The benefits liability is massive, mostly to my own citizens, whom are even harder to escape than immigrants except by emigration. My country is being run by a proto-fascist, and the only remaining benefit I get of that is that he kind of reflects my demographic, although that is rapidly being 'replaced.' So in 30 years, going down the road it is now, it could be someone just as authoritarian but sees me as the enemy instead of brown people.
I am not particularly excited to wait around for that, while paying out massive benefits to the non-productive, plus the national debt, plus the taxation rates that exceed other monarchy-like countries with even freer economic systems.
If I was anti-immigrant I wouldn't even consider immigration. I only consider it because I don't have a dogmatic allegiance to the constitution nor 'America' as a political entity; if living under a dystopic theocracy provides more liberty it shouldn't be excluded from consideration.
The main reason why I haven't left, is I'm trying real hard to not be a coward and just leave rather than try to fix things, unlike many cowardly immigrants that have arrived at the USA because they can't be bothered to fix their own country.
You're using words like "parasite" and "non productive class" to refer to immigrants.
I do not believe you when you are blowing dog whistles in every comment.
>If I was anti-immigrant I wouldn't even consider immigration.
No, you totally could. Its called self centered hypocrisy. I believe you are guilty of it.