As we’ve shown many times on these pages, the ability of the U.S. to import the highest skilled immigrants from around the world is one of America’s greatest comparative advantages.

China, Japan, India, and the UK spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to train and educate these workers and then WE get the fruits of their labor. It’s reverse foreign aid from the rest of the world to America.

Especially beneficial are the H-1B visas that are awarded to scientists, engineers, computer programmers, physicians, technicians, pharmacists and the like with special skills. There would be no Silicon Valley dominance without these “brainiacs.”

If you think we are exaggerating, consider that these three immigrants came to the U.S. as students and entered the workforce on H-1B visas.

• • • Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google)
    • Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft)
    • Elon Musk (Founder of Tesla and SpaceX)

What has been the payoff from that? Our best guess would be somewhere around $3 to $4 trillion in GDP and hundreds of billions in tax revenues.

You never know who the next Elon Musk will be, but there’s a pretty good chance he/she will be an immigrant or the son or daughter of an immigrant.

That’s why the new $100,000 fee that the Trump Administration has proposed per H-1B could be prohibitive, and if so will cost far more in foregone tax payments than it hopes to raise.

The current system is already too bureaucratic and expensive. But if we are going to charge for these visas, it would be much better to auction them to the 100,000 to 200,000 highest bidders than to impose a flat fee.