It's not a matter of asking you individually to consider a random American more important than your friend in Italy. Rather, it's about what should be the priority of national immigration policy. When a people get together and form a social compact and a government to secure their interests, the guiding policy of that government must be whatever maximizes the interest of its constituency.

That's why the open borders/free trade talk is often deeply troubling. It's one thing to argue that these policies will ultimately maximize American prosperity. You can argue that stealing away the brightest people from other countries will ultimately benefit the U.S. in the long run, etc. The problem arises when the arguments loose that utilitarian mooring and end up arguing that American policy should be concerned with lifting up Indians and Chinese in a way that doesn't necessarily maximize the prosperity of those Americans who are already here. The American government has no business caring about the "huddled masses" elsewhere. At one time it was in our interest to accept anyone and everyone, by virtue of the fact that we had a huge relatively unpopulated country, but that incentive changed as we became a mature, populous society.