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.
It's weird. When the UK voted to leave the EU, the trajectory was quite clear: exodus of workforce, economic slowdown, crisis in academic research etc. It is all playing out as projected.
But because it was kind of slow, you could kid yourself that it's not going to happen. It was like a slow-mo car crash, like watching "the Titanic" and hoping it will at last moment miss the iceberg.
It has occurred to me that one of the key drivers of the tensions around migration, stems from the undignified arbitrage of human beings resulting from the discrimination to free movement across borders.
Global corporations are permitted free movement[0].
Global capital is permitted free movement[0].
Global elites are permitted free movemen[0].
The overwhelming mass of humanity is constrained to very limited movement.
The ability of enterprises to benefit from pools of constrained humans without those benefits being similarly constrained to flow in that pool, but instead freely exfiltrate those benefits - is the source of most of the world's inequality, and consequently stokes the demand to migrate (legally or illegally).
[0] - not quite completely, but near enough as makes little difference.
This is incorrect. This constraint both profits off of and provides some benefit to the constrained population but it is not the source of inequality. The source of inequality is country/region level policies causing growth differences over time. The labour price spread caused by that drives the secondary arbitrage you identify above that profits the wealthy but also benefits the people living under crap government policy that caused lower produxtivity because their low wage factory job pays better than their alternatives.
constraining the labour is just a smart move when the majority of your population is a net cost to tax payers.
What you describe is part of, but not the entire reason why tensions arise around migration. There are at least two main drivers for tension which are missing, very broadly defined those related to cultures and social security systems where the latter is often related to the former. Taking the recent revelations about fraud in Minnesota as an example - which encompass both mentioned factors - it becomes clear that the tension is not so much about the fact that about 80.000 people from Somalia moved to this region but that these people:
(culture) by and large did not integrate into local Minnesotan culture but remain focused on their Somalian culture and traditions including clan culture which now has a marked influence on the local political climate with people voting along clan lines
(social security) for a large part are and remain dependent on the social security systems: 81% of Somali immigrants are dependent on some of the welfare systems, 78% of those who have lived for more than 10 years in the area remain dependent on these systems [1]
Combine this with the practice of calling out any criticism of these facts as 'racist' and tensions quickly arise.
The rhetorical and alarmist tone of your comment and the absurd sounding statistics you quote were what prompted me to check the background and bias of the resource you cited: CIS (Center for Immigration Studies) [1]. And oh boy! Isn't that an interesting and fun find!
Here is what Wikipedia says [2]:
> The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is an American anti-immigration think tank . It favors far lower immigration numbers and produces analyses to further those views. The CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham alongside eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton in 1985 as a spin-off of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
> CIS has been involved in the creation of Project 2025
> Reports published by CIS have been disputed by scholars on immigration, fact-checkers and news outlets, and immigration-research organizations. The organization had significant influence within the Trump administration, which cited the group's work to defend its immigration policies . The Southern Poverty Law Center designated CIS as a hate group with ties to the American nativist movement .
All emphasis are mine. So to explain the reason behind a problem, you chose a resource that caused the problem in the first place. Hilarious! That too, an organization with a known history of hatred and bigotry against the population you're 'criticizing', and of producing fake research.
At this point, that resource alone is enough to suspect that everything you argued is false - especially the statistics. There is no better way to discredit yourself than to choose such a pathologically biased source.
Media Bias/Fact Check service [3] rates them with 'low' factuality (7.0), 'extreme right wing' bias (8.9) and an overall 'low credibility' rating. Here are some quotes:
> Overall, we rate CIS a questionable source based on publishing misleading information (propaganda) regarding immigration and ties either directly or indirectly to the John Tanton Network, a known White Nationalist.
> A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing of credible information, a complete lack of transparency, and/or is fake news.
Whenever we look for sources to quote for some facts, we try to find well known publications or at least something that turns higher up in the web search, so that nobody will outright reject our claims for lack of credibility. How do you all instead find such obscure sources on such specific topics? Do you refer some resource list or similar?
> Combine this with the practice of calling out any criticism of these facts as 'racist' and tensions quickly arise.
This really is the cherry on the top! You might as well just say "I'm going to say some racist nonsense, but don't you dare call me a racist!" Preemption by gaslighting?
> ... tensions quickly arise.
The tensions due to hateful behavior are already so high that the minor inconveniences caused by calling it out are well worth it.
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.
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.
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.
Being “productive in our economy” shouldn’t be the test. People are hardworking and productive all over the world. People in my dad’s village in Bangladesh work really fucking hard. That’s not what makes America different from Bangladesh.
The test should be, if we put the immigrants on an empty plain, could they recreate Iowa or Massachusetts? I.e. a bottom-up democracy characterized by self-government, rule of law, weak extended family ties and strong civic institutions. Because if they couldn’t recreate those things they can’t maintain America. Instead, what’ll happen (and is happening) will be a slow reversion to the global mean.
As we have seen time and time again with democracy experiments in the third world, these things are rare innovations and can’t be conveyed to other cultures just by writing government structures and laws down on paper. The corollary to that is that there is no guarantee we can perpetuate these things in America against immigration just because they’re written down on paper.
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.
It’s weird how people don’t recognize that most of these companies started with American founders who then decided to use exploitative labor policies including collusion then slowly became more and more detached - and hired other people to do the exploitation for them. Who better to do the exploitation than those who know the ins and outs of what makes the exploitees tick?
Do people really have no clue that the rise of Leetcode has come from exam culture in eastern countries? Are they that clueless?
I am one of the only Americans in my department at faang. The people I work with aren’t some special level of intelligence. It’s just not cool to work in tech and Americans know that. That’s why you see 2nd gen Asian Americans joining finance and going to nyc. They know it’s fucking lame.
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.
This comment is starting to turn gray for me, which means that it’s being downvoted.
I don’t know much about this topic, but all of the factual content mentioned above seems to be true.
Can anyone who disagrees with ‘rayiner here explain why they downvoted? Is it just an unpleasant observation? Is it a disagreement with his conclusion in the last few sentences? Is it just a downvote against the commenter (iirc, he tends to make conservative talking points)? Something else?
I genuinely want to know, as this seems like it would be an important set of talking points around immigration as a whole that any policy maker would want to consider.
I wonder what the emigrating demographics look like. I have looked more into emigration lately as my demographic is 'replaced' and productive workers are increasingly used as fodder for parasitic attacks in favor of the ever growing benefits towards the non-productive class. The USA is increasingly becoming a place where it is best to be either be either a rich capital holder or to own nothing and get ~everything provided as long as you pop out enough kids or meet the right benefits criteria.
If you're in the middle getting squeezed you can earn more in places like Singapore or Dubai and at lower taxation rates, and the immigration scheme might be fairly simple. If you're going to live under the whims of an insane ruler you might as well get the upsides of such monarchy like you do in places like Dubai. 'Free' speech and easy access to guns are basically the only remaining gambit USA has to offer me that ~nowhere else does.
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.
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!
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.
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...
Turns out it was just a matter of making your country shitty enough so more people want to flee from it than get there. Mission accomplished, I guess.
It's weird. When the UK voted to leave the EU, the trajectory was quite clear: exodus of workforce, economic slowdown, crisis in academic research etc. It is all playing out as projected.
But because it was kind of slow, you could kid yourself that it's not going to happen. It was like a slow-mo car crash, like watching "the Titanic" and hoping it will at last moment miss the iceberg.
This feels similar.
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.
It has occurred to me that one of the key drivers of the tensions around migration, stems from the undignified arbitrage of human beings resulting from the discrimination to free movement across borders.
Global corporations are permitted free movement[0].
Global capital is permitted free movement[0].
Global elites are permitted free movemen[0].
The overwhelming mass of humanity is constrained to very limited movement.
The ability of enterprises to benefit from pools of constrained humans without those benefits being similarly constrained to flow in that pool, but instead freely exfiltrate those benefits - is the source of most of the world's inequality, and consequently stokes the demand to migrate (legally or illegally).
[0] - not quite completely, but near enough as makes little difference.
EDITED to fix formatting.
This is incorrect. This constraint both profits off of and provides some benefit to the constrained population but it is not the source of inequality. The source of inequality is country/region level policies causing growth differences over time. The labour price spread caused by that drives the secondary arbitrage you identify above that profits the wealthy but also benefits the people living under crap government policy that caused lower produxtivity because their low wage factory job pays better than their alternatives.
constraining the labour is just a smart move when the majority of your population is a net cost to tax payers.
What you describe is part of, but not the entire reason why tensions arise around migration. There are at least two main drivers for tension which are missing, very broadly defined those related to cultures and social security systems where the latter is often related to the former. Taking the recent revelations about fraud in Minnesota as an example - which encompass both mentioned factors - it becomes clear that the tension is not so much about the fact that about 80.000 people from Somalia moved to this region but that these people:
(culture) by and large did not integrate into local Minnesotan culture but remain focused on their Somalian culture and traditions including clan culture which now has a marked influence on the local political climate with people voting along clan lines
(social security) for a large part are and remain dependent on the social security systems: 81% of Somali immigrants are dependent on some of the welfare systems, 78% of those who have lived for more than 10 years in the area remain dependent on these systems [1]
Combine this with the practice of calling out any criticism of these facts as 'racist' and tensions quickly arise.
[1] https://cis.org/Report/Somali-Immigrants-Minnesota
The rhetorical and alarmist tone of your comment and the absurd sounding statistics you quote were what prompted me to check the background and bias of the resource you cited: CIS (Center for Immigration Studies) [1]. And oh boy! Isn't that an interesting and fun find!
Here is what Wikipedia says [2]:
> The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is an American anti-immigration think tank . It favors far lower immigration numbers and produces analyses to further those views. The CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham alongside eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton in 1985 as a spin-off of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
> CIS has been involved in the creation of Project 2025
> Reports published by CIS have been disputed by scholars on immigration, fact-checkers and news outlets, and immigration-research organizations. The organization had significant influence within the Trump administration, which cited the group's work to defend its immigration policies . The Southern Poverty Law Center designated CIS as a hate group with ties to the American nativist movement .
All emphasis are mine. So to explain the reason behind a problem, you chose a resource that caused the problem in the first place. Hilarious! That too, an organization with a known history of hatred and bigotry against the population you're 'criticizing', and of producing fake research.
At this point, that resource alone is enough to suspect that everything you argued is false - especially the statistics. There is no better way to discredit yourself than to choose such a pathologically biased source.
Media Bias/Fact Check service [3] rates them with 'low' factuality (7.0), 'extreme right wing' bias (8.9) and an overall 'low credibility' rating. Here are some quotes:
> Overall, we rate CIS a questionable source based on publishing misleading information (propaganda) regarding immigration and ties either directly or indirectly to the John Tanton Network, a known White Nationalist.
> A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing of credible information, a complete lack of transparency, and/or is fake news.
Whenever we look for sources to quote for some facts, we try to find well known publications or at least something that turns higher up in the web search, so that nobody will outright reject our claims for lack of credibility. How do you all instead find such obscure sources on such specific topics? Do you refer some resource list or similar?
> Combine this with the practice of calling out any criticism of these facts as 'racist' and tensions quickly arise.
This really is the cherry on the top! You might as well just say "I'm going to say some racist nonsense, but don't you dare call me a racist!" Preemption by gaslighting?
> ... tensions quickly arise.
The tensions due to hateful behavior are already so high that the minor inconveniences caused by calling it out are well worth it.
[1] https://cis.org/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Immigration_Studies
[3] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/center-for-immigration-studie...
7 replies →
A lot of Silicon Valley’s success is attributable to immigrants. Be careful what you wish for.
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.
8 replies →
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.
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.
Far beyond Silicon Valley: for example, we used to rely on immigrants to fill medical jobs – roughly ¼ of doctors, for example:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/11/how-immigrant...
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.
Being “productive in our economy” shouldn’t be the test. People are hardworking and productive all over the world. People in my dad’s village in Bangladesh work really fucking hard. That’s not what makes America different from Bangladesh.
The test should be, if we put the immigrants on an empty plain, could they recreate Iowa or Massachusetts? I.e. a bottom-up democracy characterized by self-government, rule of law, weak extended family ties and strong civic institutions. Because if they couldn’t recreate those things they can’t maintain America. Instead, what’ll happen (and is happening) will be a slow reversion to the global mean.
As we have seen time and time again with democracy experiments in the third world, these things are rare innovations and can’t be conveyed to other cultures just by writing government structures and laws down on paper. The corollary to that is that there is no guarantee we can perpetuate these things in America against immigration just because they’re written down on paper.
5 replies →
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...
3 replies →
It’s weird how people don’t recognize that most of these companies started with American founders who then decided to use exploitative labor policies including collusion then slowly became more and more detached - and hired other people to do the exploitation for them. Who better to do the exploitation than those who know the ins and outs of what makes the exploitees tick?
Do people really have no clue that the rise of Leetcode has come from exam culture in eastern countries? Are they that clueless?
I am one of the only Americans in my department at faang. The people I work with aren’t some special level of intelligence. It’s just not cool to work in tech and Americans know that. That’s why you see 2nd gen Asian Americans joining finance and going to nyc. They know it’s fucking lame.
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.
This comment is starting to turn gray for me, which means that it’s being downvoted.
I don’t know much about this topic, but all of the factual content mentioned above seems to be true.
Can anyone who disagrees with ‘rayiner here explain why they downvoted? Is it just an unpleasant observation? Is it a disagreement with his conclusion in the last few sentences? Is it just a downvote against the commenter (iirc, he tends to make conservative talking points)? Something else?
I genuinely want to know, as this seems like it would be an important set of talking points around immigration as a whole that any policy maker would want to consider.
13 replies →
I wonder what the emigrating demographics look like. I have looked more into emigration lately as my demographic is 'replaced' and productive workers are increasingly used as fodder for parasitic attacks in favor of the ever growing benefits towards the non-productive class. The USA is increasingly becoming a place where it is best to be either be either a rich capital holder or to own nothing and get ~everything provided as long as you pop out enough kids or meet the right benefits criteria.
If you're in the middle getting squeezed you can earn more in places like Singapore or Dubai and at lower taxation rates, and the immigration scheme might be fairly simple. If you're going to live under the whims of an insane ruler you might as well get the upsides of such monarchy like you do in places like Dubai. 'Free' speech and easy access to guns are basically the only remaining gambit USA has to offer me that ~nowhere else does.
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?
> parasitic attacks in favor of the ever growing benefits towards the non-productive class
You can just say "billionaires".
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!
12 replies →
> get ~everything provided as long as you pop out enough kids or meet the right benefits criteria
You’ve been huffing way too much right wing propaganda. “Welfare queens” have been a boogeyman for decades.
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.
7 replies →
When billionaires and red states are the biggest "welfare queens".
It's always projection with these people.
1 reply →
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