Even this forum can’t decide whether skilled personnel are a boon because they positively contribute to the local economy, or a negative because they undermine employment prospects for locals.

I don't know about this forum, but mainstream economics (and quite a few of the more niche approaches, too) is pretty much all in favour of open immigration for all skill levels.

I don't think you can say that. They are neither for or against, they make (or try to make) predictions what happens in either case. Who benefits and who loses is not the same in those cases, it's not linear. If you wan to be "for" or "against" you have to take a side. Doesn't mean they don't have opinions too, but two economists that each favor different outcomes may still agree on the methods of their field.

Economists generally point out that the world would be a lot richer with open borders. You can of course argue about whether its desirable to be richer.

https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of... (https://archive.ph/TFS4G)

Net benefits are positive from open migration.

Not just net benefits when you include the foreigners, but also just netted over natives.

Except for the guys receiving the lowered salaries. And all the other problems of migration, when some destinations are WAAYYYY more desirable to live in, even jobless, than others.

You guys are very selective, either not even bothering with links, or carefully selecting that one particular piece of paper supporting your PoV. Which of course looked at only very few if not even just a single variable, and (by necessity) failed to account for the breadth of reality.

Quoting single papers is always a sign of desperation. That's not how anything works, when given a broad question. Studies are extremely specific! In comparison, the question here is as broad as it can possibly get for an economics question.

Discussions such as here are only worthwhile when the parties don't care about "winning" and use debate club methods.

So where are your links?

I think the policy is “immigrate your complement.”

There really is a big difference betwwwn needing to import engineers to create high end chips and WITCH companies using h1B to get cheap contractors to do enterprise dev or any software development except something really specialized