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Plausibly yes. The impact of innovation might be on a logistic curve as we vacuum up all the low-hanging fruit, but the patent numbers are sufficient to demonstrate that immigration rates don't have an effect on people having ideas. I can anticipate your objections, but before making them first remember that the most important word in my argument was "anti-correlate". Even if patents granted becomes an increasingly-bad measure of what you would consider important about innovation, there should still be some identifiable correlation not lost in confounding because immigration rate isn't asymptotically increasing over the span of America's existence. Also, if you doubt America's numbers specifically, you can look elsewhere for confirmation-- we're both proposing general rules that should hold cross-culturally. You should be able to eyeball patent rates and immigration figures in any given country to see if rate of innovation (or rate of growth in innovation) falls after immigration spikes.
Skill issue. Overcome your cognitive biases and find some better vibes. Or don't, I guess. I'm pretty convinced that relying on statistical techniques over faulty human wiring as a general principle overperforms in the aggregate, but maybe I'm wrong. If we're lucky we can compare life trajectories 50 years from now and hash it all out.
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