I am an immigrant (F1) in the US (and I would like to think of myself as ‘high-skilled’ although others may disagree!). So, I am clearly biased.
It all sounds good in theory but it would be hard to assess what counts as AI-related work and what doesn’t. Even just a simple regression can be called “Machine Learning”. Economists have to do regressions basically everyday. In that case, they would have it in their resume and then someone in the VISA office would still reject them because they would have to assume ‘Regression means AI’ and your plan to let the “Oxford-educated economist” into the US would still be foiled. Also skilled economists could just work at tech firms and help them make money which they could then invest in developing AI further.
PS:- I downvoted this post. As I said, I am biased. But I saw very little effort from the author to actually provide references/evidence to substantiate some of the implied causalities. For instance, the author says things like “This policy is unattractive if you think”. IMHO a better post in the “Effective Altrusim” forum (which is based on ‘evidence and reasoning’ and not just what people like to think) would be link to some empirical work that actually shows firms don’t simply just shift if you restrict high-skilled immigration. Here is a study that claims the contrary that indeed immigration restrictions on high-skilled workers simply moves operations offshore: Glennon, B. (2023). How do restrictions on high-skilled immigration affect offshoring? Evidence from the H-1B program. Management Science. https://economics.nd.edu/assets/361162/bglennon_immigration_offshoring.pdf
I am an immigrant (F1) in the US (and I would like to think of myself as ‘high-skilled’ although others may disagree!). So, I am clearly biased.
It all sounds good in theory but it would be hard to assess what counts as AI-related work and what doesn’t. Even just a simple regression can be called “Machine Learning”. Economists have to do regressions basically everyday. In that case, they would have it in their resume and then someone in the VISA office would still reject them because they would have to assume ‘Regression means AI’ and your plan to let the “Oxford-educated economist” into the US would still be foiled. Also skilled economists could just work at tech firms and help them make money which they could then invest in developing AI further.
PS:- I downvoted this post. As I said, I am biased. But I saw very little effort from the author to actually provide references/evidence to substantiate some of the implied causalities. For instance, the author says things like “This policy is unattractive if you think”. IMHO a better post in the “Effective Altrusim” forum (which is based on ‘evidence and reasoning’ and not just what people like to think) would be link to some empirical work that actually shows firms don’t simply just shift if you restrict high-skilled immigration. Here is a study that claims the contrary that indeed immigration restrictions on high-skilled workers simply moves operations offshore: Glennon, B. (2023). How do restrictions on high-skilled immigration affect offshoring? Evidence from the H-1B program. Management Science. https://economics.nd.edu/assets/361162/bglennon_immigration_offshoring.pdf