Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There should be no problem continuing to hire PhDs and other foreigners with actual unique skillsets at $130k. You're applying your software-dev tainted view of salaries to the sciences - how much do you think a typical PhD-holding research scientist earns?
Scientists used to make a good living in the USA. Now the market is flooded with cheap foreigners and science is a road to poverty. Ending the employment of cheap foreigners, including as TAs and RAs, would go a long way to making science a respectable profession again. And it would open the field to American women. When math and science professors can't make a decent living to support a family until after their prim…
If companies are limited to domestic scientists then they'll quite happily move their R&D departments to countries with more relaxed immigration laws. Foreign universities will happily take the best researchers from around the world that are denied work in the US.
We're seeing this in the UK from the Brexit fallout. We were getting the brightest from around Europe working in our research labs. Now that we're going to make it more difficult for them they're probably going to go elsewhere.