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The whole point of work visas is to address situations when there aren't enough qualified domestic workers for the open positions that are available. It's economically favorable to fill a position with a qualified foreign national than it is to just leave it open.

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I don't think it's that simple. Open positions for which there "aren't enough workers" are effectively positions that companies don't want to pay market rates for. It's in their interests to always have such positions so they can bring in cheap workers. Labor shortages are mostly bullshit.

It depends on what market you're deciding to operate in, right? Global market vs domestic market. In an era of globalization, it's a huge loss for an economically well-off country to close itself off from the rest of the world. Remember that businesses don't have any obligation to operate in your country if the local labor market simply becomes too expensive. It also means that a business is far more likely to leave critical positions unfilled because an available person with the required skill set literally doesn't exist (or is extremely difficult to find). The only way to find talent is to poach from other companies, but this is a zero-sum game and offers no overall economic benefit to your country.

In principle a well-implemented visa program picks up people with required skills rather than just simply increasing the size of the available labor pool to suppress costs of labor. If the current program doesn't achieve this, then it certainly requires an overhaul. But abolishment (i.e. closing the labor market to domestic candidates only) doesn't do anything to further the economic health of your country.

Not really.

If employers need 1,000 neurosurgeons, but only 800 exist in the US, no amount of pay is going to magically create a new neurosurgeon.

That's not how economics works.

Please explain.

From what i understand it takes more than a decade to create a new neurosurgeon.

No amount of money can create one today.

The premise of a command economy where you top down specify you need N of something is faulty to begin with.

Huh? You're saying a command economy can create a new neurosurgeon instantly?

Ideally. But it’s de facto used to suppress domestic wages. An auction system would fix that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...

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