> I enjoy discussing and debating this on HN, but large powerful corporations are likely to get their way.

Haha, so true. I think it's fun and worthwhile to at least figure out what's going on. At some point I have transitioned my interest in politics from "I want to change the world for the better!" to a more detached, curiosity-based position.

WRT STEM MS, my understanding is that in "hard" engineering (electrical, mechanical, etc), MS is economically worthwhile. In science and probably math, it is useless, you need a Ph.D. Not sure the breakdown for CS. In general, there is always a salary increase for each level of education, but the difference b/t fields is in how many years it will take to "pay back" the investment.

But more generally, I'm not completely sure what you're proposing as the ideal solution here. When you say:

> This is why I oppose efforts to allow corporations to control the conditions under which immigrants are allowed to come to the US

Do you mean you oppose "chaining" to a particular company, selection of particular skillsets, or what? Are you saying you support an immigration quota with no particular selection criteria (minus specific "Einstein" exceptions)?

Much of your argument seems to boil down to the idea that it's unfair to would-be immigrants to make them sink costs in education to have an uncertain shot at coming to the U.S. Maybe, but that has no bearing on what is in the U.S.'s (i.e., median US voter's) best interests.

> Ironically, in other words, if you hear corporations talking about a "shortage" in a field, it may be rational to avoid that field if you're a citizen with freedom to choose your job and educational path.

Yes!!! This was my takeaway as well. "Shortage" talk is a giveaway that a sector is trying to apply some kind of pressure to reduce salaries in that sector. Even in a field like nursing, where there is supposedly a "shortage", but there is no prospect of getting immigration to fill the gap, what is happening is they are trying to sucker young people into this field in which the salary is simply too low after you account for all the headaches like weird hours, stress, etc.

Such an "odd" correlation that the fields with so-called "shortages" are always ones with higher than median salary-to-education ratio.

But perhaps it is not so clear. Because there would be no "shortage" talk in the first place unless the job were already economically attractive. The rational decision probably depends on how successful you expect the sector to be in bringing down the sector's wage towards the national median.

Another thing you've helped me realize in the course of this conversation is that all the talk of "job creation", as if the number of jobs is a static thing independent of wage, is totally ridiculous. "We need policy change X to create jobs in sector Y" is code for "we want to reduce salaries in sector Y". In this regard "job creation" may be regarded as equivalent in goals and deceptiveness to "shortage".

> One area where I may disagree with you a bit is on the Einstein thing. I consider this a bit of a red herring.

I meant "Einstein" to be a stand-in for "person with high potential economic/cultural/scientific value". The implicit question was, should we maximize immigration for highest value-per-immigrant (however that is defined), or should we select random immigrants?