This is a real problem that the U.S. computer industry has. There are a LOT of really smart, well-educated people all over the planet and only so many immigration slots into the US each year. There are tons of stories of U.S. companies hiring foreigners they need for a short time, and then watching as they're forced to go home where they, of course, start a competing company. So they now have a competitor instead of an employee, and there's nothing they can do about it.
The US governments knows this is a problem, immigration services has been working with silicon valley entrepreneurs for the last year to figure out ways to help avoid these problems. But as civil servants, the best they can do is make minor adjustments, only Congress can make big changes to immigration law.
Given all this, what Apple is doing makes perfect sense. This really isn't a money-saving thing like the factories are. Rather, it's a way to tap into talent that they have no way of bringing to California.
For a long time, American Universities have been giving enrollment priority to foreign students, whom they could charge much more money than American Students. After years of giving this preferential treatment to foreigners, they have created a larger gap in knowledge, skills, and talent between foreign and American graduates, and so American companies feel compelled to hire some of the more knowledgeable, skilled, and talented foreigners.
It's really another demonstration how short-term greed has sown long-term deficits in our corporate and education futures.
This new R&D facility might be good for Apple, but I don't yet see this as being any good for Americans.
We need to stop trying to be "educators of the world", and start educating ourselves. We need to give enrollment priority back to Americans, and hope that we can rebuild what we have lost.
It is not our responsibility to educate the world. Most of them are fine doing that on their own, without us, anyway.