What I saw in school was a lot of foreign masters in CS students with zero experience with coding and often with very little interest in learning. Big cheating issues. The school liked it because they were paying full price, and IIRC the students liked it because they got residency while studying and they could turn that into work permits and longer term status by getting a job after graduating. Definitely not an automatic ticket, but a relatively low barrier way to enter, assuming you have money.

There were plenty of local masters students as well, but it just didn't make a whole lot of sense to do masters in CS at the time, not a lot of value there beyond undergrad unless you were on your way to PhD or maybe decided to study CS after completing some other undergrad discipline.

Sounds like one heck of a loophole for those individuals, propped up by the institutions themselves (as usual). It reminds me of all the loopholes with the H-1B visas- for example, employers can get around both the "you need to hire U.S. citizens ahead of H-1B visa-holders" and the "you need to pay H-1B employees the same as U.S. citizens" stipulations?

That said, I have personally only known Asian SWEs whom I worked with in person to be very talented and hardworking, perhaps to a fault. Definitely to the detriment of their health and time with their families.

I don't doubt there remains a significant number of "0.1x devs" that are somehow still employed despite everything, and it's a shame because that heavily implies there are a significant number of unemployed "10x" or "1x" devs who can't find a job- so, again, as always, the institutions are supporting the status quo (in this case, by not really giving a fuck if they have quality talent working for them).