These "my lab without immigrants" pictures are fascinating to me. The basic frame you have to accept is that vital research is getting done. But, really, there haven't been major practical breakthroughs in decades. Let us take the Peter Thiel + Robert Gordon view here:

We plucked all the low hanging fruit by 1970, leaving us with only further advances in moving electrons, not rearranging atoms. Our economy is run by finance, not hardcore R&D. Corporations reflect this: they trust no major technical changes are coming, so they...

do share buybacks instead. R&D gets outsourced on the cheap to academics who pump out low impact studies with lots of immigrant lab slaves. This kind of research hasn't had much impact on our standard of living in the last 40 years. Statistical studies but nothing REAL.

These labs tend to go around in circles on impossible problems (cancer, AI, whatever) while obvious systemic problems (opioids, sperm decline) get minor treatment. We aren't talking about jet engines or semi-conductors being invented by immigrants, in the end.