People think immigrants come to just take. When they can contribute to the economy.

The impact on academics and research has already been felt over the last decade. US used to be the default destination for academics and skilled workers from China ever since the cultural revolution. They engrained themselves in the country, studied/worked at top univerities, taught multiple generations of students, did key research, worked at top tech companies, and overall were major contributors to American technological superiority.

Then starting ~2016 Trump and his DoJ made it borderline impossible for Chinese nationals to get visas, specifically targeting research universities. Since then new Chinese skilled immigration has slowed down to a trickle, and there has been a massive "brain gain" of existing talent in China's favor.

The result - China now has a booming tech industry, Chinese universities have overlapped Amercian ones in research output, China is a very close 2nd in the AI race. And as skilled immigrants continue to be driven out of the US China in particular will enjoy the benefits.

The world's richest man is an illegal immigrant who started multiple companies.

(Musk started X.com while on a student visa and didn't get around to securing a work visa until many years later. This rule violation technically renders his U.S. citizenship void under Trump-era immigration rules.)

I think what voters want is for highly skilled founders to come and start companies and for normally skilled employment to go to Americans before foreigners.

It’s unquestionably bad for the United States, but it will be good for the rest of the world. Time for US dominance to end, and Trump is doing a good job of that.

And now they can be more evenly distributed all over the world. I'd call it a net win even if administration did not think it this way.