alt Hacker NewsIt’s not weird when you understand that Americans never voted to have a skilled immigration system: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi.... Had someone tried to get one through Congress, they would have lost elections.
The system we have is one that was politically feasible to implement. On paper, we have a system for “non-immigrant” temporary workers. Employers sponsor green cards for skilled workers because the theoretically temporary job is the only avenue for most of these workers to get to the U.S. in the first place.
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That’s just a weird modern view tainted by recent nativist and populist sentiments. If you go back 20 years, in 2006, it would be utterly not controversial for a republican politician to support issuing green cards to anyone who completed a PhD in America.
I know you post this canon of "but acktually, Congress didn't want skilled immigration" in all threads, so it's useful to point to the actual legislative record, AC21 (American Competitiveness in the 21st Century), which is the most recent passed legislation that covers a lot this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Competitiveness_in_th...).