> The choice of word is interesting: encouraging immigration of skilled workers to the US has the benefit of preventing them from participating in the developm

> The choice of word is interesting: encouraging immigration of skilled workers to the US has the benefit of preventing them from participating in the development of their home country. In theory, yes. However, in practice, "participating in the development" can mean working for crappy employers, for a pittance, on some ass backward php/delphi/whatever system that has been accruing technical debt for the past decade. Not all developing countries are friendly for entrepreneurs either(bureaucracy, corruption, taxes, limited access to credit), so options may be limited. In many cases, they wouldn't be able to contribute that much, but they may be highly skilled, and the United States works as a force multiplier. Source: came from a third world country, had a company for a couple of years, spent another couple of years trying to officially close that company after operations had ceased.