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Thanks. That does indeed shift my opinion a bit, though I am still not convinced that immigration (and especially our current H1B program) is overall a net good. The discourse from the pro-immigration side on Twitter (and your analysis, if I am reading you correctly) is that more immigrants = more people working = more net GDP, thus a net gain to everyone. But what if individually it results in a loss on average (e.g., the average native-born American goes from a net-1 job to a net 0.8 job? "An-even-better net-1.1 job enabled by the migrant (now net 1.6)" seems very optimistic.)
I am not a nativist, not entirely persuaded by pure culture war arguments, and like most folks who grew up in the "colorblindness is good" and "America is a melting pot" beforetimes, I really want to believe that infinity immigrants (or infinity minus the fig leaf we use to supposedly filter out those who will be a pure drag on the economy) will benefit us overall. But I have to admit, I am coming around to the anti-immigrationist position. You seem to be saying that the arguments Elon and Vivik are getting ratioed for on Twitter are actually correct?
Then we're shifting the goalposts of whether the standard of success is harm to the economy, or the average current worker. Rather than a criticism, though, I am very sympathetic for that concern! The neoliberal consensus cracked because the advocates argued there would be no losers, and then stood by as regions were devastated because the multiplicative effect worked in reverse as industrial areas de-industrialized and saw money leave. Nations have a responsibility, or at least a compelling electoral interest, to the losers of economic disruption. We are in the midst of an ongoing political realignment of American class-politics, and new alliances are being made / tested that couldn't have credibly tried before.
But that's a social/political argument, not an economic argument, even though it was initially provided in the form of an economic argument. This is part of why the 'nativist' arguments against migration also get discredited- because they try and seize various mottes ('immigration is bad for the economy') which is relatively easily cracked. (Another one is 'migrants don't pay taxes'- the amount of tax-capture of even undocumented migrants is quite high, because many of the methods of undocumented migrant hiring don't involve evading things like payroll taxes or sales taxes and so on.)
The harder argument is whether migration lowers average jobs. This is also a much older argument in which the American cultural acceptance of capitalistic costs / lower social cohesion / constant churn that leads to a general view on how wealth is generated to make those net-1 jobs in the first place. Net-1 jobs are a result, not the start, of a system process, and that system is constantly raising and lowering the net-benefit of jobs based on market demands. Regulations to protect established interests- like people who want to avoid competition- are the same as regulations that raise costs for consumers who could benefit from not only primary actor savings (the consumer charged more due to input costs), but secondary market benefits (the consumer who is charged less, can now spend more on other people's other things).
Like, say that formally net-1 job is now a net 0.8 job. So what, if that transition (lower employment costs) can translate into second order benefits beyond those two participants (say by raising 20 other jobs by net +0.01). Then we're quibling over division of spoils, not net loss. Which goes back to being a social/political rather than economic argument.
But this argument gets very convoluted, hard to explain in clear terms, harder to prove, and politically difficult at best compared to simpler and stronger (even if wrong) memes.
I am... neutral on the position of a platform I make a point to avoid? I'm not familiar with their specific arguments, and I don't consider myself enough of an expert in the relevant policy fields to have a strong option. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if politically contentious people were being ratioed for politically contentious views, especially if other actors (including those with bot nets) had an incentive to maximize the impression of opposition. I wouldn't be surprised if they got ratioed regardlless of correctness.
I will say that arguments that appeal to per-unit quality over volume are quite often wrong, and more so when there's a self-serving interest on the part of the person making them (which is almost always true if they can't compete with volume). From a system / population performance level, 'better' is often less important than 'good enough', and as long as you have 'good enough' then more is generally better. This applies in system engineering (not over-engineering to raise costs), manpower (you don't need the best person in the world, only the best person who is good enough and available), ethics (demands of moral perfection obstructing imperfect improvements), information (overly complicated long-form arguments are less compelling than floods of simple-but-generally-sound constructs), and so on. This was long a regular refrain for why Chinese manufacturing wasn't a long-term industrial threat- because China wouldn't be able to compete on quality. Well, China has quality-enough that a lot of quality and more expensive producers went out of the business or went out of the country.
Part of the issue with the visa issue is that economic benefit is a necessary component of the advocates of either direction not coming off as selfish, as their position of advocacy probably really does benefit them. Someone is urging more a more distorted form of the 'ideal' market. This is where general market theory would go into consumer surplus / savings concepts, where artificially higher restrictions- such as maintaining a cartel dynamic- creates market inefficiencies that rob the consumers of market efficiencies.
And this creates the issue that employees resisting HB1 visas are not consumers in this model- they are producers, and their employers are their customers, and the HB1 visa market debate is a debate of how many producers/suppliers of labor should be allowed in the market. As a supply principle, ease of entry into a market increases supply, thus lowering costs and increasing quantity provided. Which is why labor unions exist- as a measure to restrain supply.
Historically the American labor movements have lost that fight, or at best had only conditional support. I have no strong feeling how it will turn this time, in part because (a) I don't think it matters on economic truth, and (b) I think some of the controversy is just an extension of politics.
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