Definitely a famous story that gets retold and almost mythologized in China. When I taught over there, several different middle school students independently told me about this story.
How many geniuses are leaving the US right now due to Xenophobia?
That was (probably) never anyone's intention, American representative democracy is just schizophrenic by design. For the same reason the US has never faithfully abided by any treaty, laws and policies rarely end up functioning as intended after the political process.
It'll be interesting to see if America can reverse this trend. Our ability to be a sink for global talent has been a massive boost to America's success. The funny thing is that there will be no substitute should America falter. The rising powers are not as immigrant friendly. There are as many foreigners in tiny Taiwan as in mighty China. What might well happen is that the particular combination of human agglomeration, relatively free markets, and a diverse society might just be lost and with it all the human productivity that came with it.
0: "do we really need them?" "aren't locals enough?" "we should train locals" https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
This is absolutely true. In college I remember going out with girls from various different countries. Made friends with tons of folks from all over the world.
I guess you might see a bit of that in London or a handful of other European countries, but nothing on the same scale.
But you could argue from a business point of view you can get everyone on a zoom call anyway.
If I can hire someone in Malaysia for 1/10th of an American, why wouldn't I do that.
Keep in mind China has a different founding myth.
America is the so called country of immigrants.