Labour market shortages, structural problems and unfavourable demographics have all prompted governments to act, often by focusing on high‐skilled immigration. However, policy responses have been very different. Some countries were able to adopt quite open high‐skilled immigration policies, while others did not. This article provides a political economy explanation for this. It argues that, despite similar pressures, high‐skilled immigration policy outputs vary due to shifting coalitions between disaggregated sectors of native high‐skilled, low‐skilled labour and capital. To probe this argument, the article examines coalitions in four countries (France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom) from the late 1990s to present, and draws on original interviews with policy‐makers, unions and employers' associations; official documents and the literature on immigration, political economy and public policy. The varying labour market organization of actors informs differences in coalitions which in turn has resulted in different high‐skilled immigration policy outputs, cross‐nationally and over time.