We don’t get the world’s best and brightest. We generally do NOT get Japanese or German or Singaporean trained engineers because they don’t get visa’s.
We get a lot of Chinese & Africans (shithole countries), which aint Japanese, German or Singaporean. Corporations getting H1B Visas are looking for “low cost” engineers (again, shithole countries).
I helped close a plant in Tokyo in 2012 (due to the Earthquake Tsunami completely screwing up their power grid and they couldn’t ship parts on time) and tried to get the engineering manager a job in the US, but she couldn’t get a Visa.
Our immigration system is a complete joke. Since Ted Kennedy, the priority has been keeping out any potential entrant - regardless of qualifications - who might eventually become a citizen and vote against the collectivist agenda.
Our open immigration of a century ago only worked because it wasn't that easy to get here - it was primarily the ingenious and self-motivated who tended to find their way to Ellis Island. Our system specifically works to exclude the ingenious and self-motivated and favors the import of day laborers from random nations under the label of "refugees".
Then we try to pretend the COVID-19 stats are a result of citizens breathing on each other from two aisles away at the grocery store...