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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
2 replies →
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 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.
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...
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.
[dead]
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.
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Brah, you are just straight up reprehensible with your views
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