Immigration restrictions will hurt scientific competitiveness

Last week, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation denying visas for more than half a million foreigners to work in the United States for the next six months. The affected H-1B visas for high-skilled workers and issuance of green cards will prevent talented scientists and technicians from entering the country. I believe it will have lasting effects on the United States’ scientific and technological competitiveness. Although, I might be biased: 30 years ago I myself entered the U.S. on a H-1B visa.

Since the 1980s, the world’s economic center of gravity, which is calculated using the average country’s location weighted by its GDP, has steadily shifted from America and Europe toward China. There is no world scientific center of gravity, but I believe it would also shift toward China, as it has overtaken the United States in total number of science publications. In 2000, China accounted for 5 percent of global spending on research and development, as the United States accounted for 40 percent. Just 15 years later, China was responsible for 21 percent of global research and development funding spend, with the United States spending 29 percent. Trump’s proclamation is not going to help this situation.

American universities consistently perform well in all global rankings of academic institutions and attract many foreign graduate students. In 2015, more than half of all computer science, engineering and mathematics graduate students were international students. Most of these students return to their native countries upon completing their graduate studies, but a significant number stay in the United States and become naturalized citizens. They are the engine of our academic research system and the talent pool that feeds our industries. And, since 2000, 37 of the 89 U.S. citizens awarded a Nobel Prize were born in another country. Most notably, all six American winners of the 2016 Nobel Prize in economics and STEM fields were immigrants.

In a disturbing trend, the National Science Foundation reports that the number of international graduate students coming to the United States dropped by 22,000 (5.5 percent) in 2017. The president’s proclamation will dramatically decrease this number, which does not bode well for U.S. science. Not only do immigrants contribute to an high number of Nobel awards, but they also bring new ways of thinking to their research labs. They have studied science in different educational systems that place different emphases on rote learning, historic understanding and interdisciplinary research. They often bring an alternative and important perspective that a homogeneous scientific community cannot match. We need to attract and retain scientists from all nations, genders and creeds.

According to data from the Institute of International Education’s Open Door report, China is the leading source of STEM students in the U.S. Now, Chinese students feel under attack. On May 29, the U.S. government issued a “Proclamation on the Suspension of Entry as Nonimmigrants of Certain Students and Researchers from the People’s

Republic of China.” That resulted in the expulsion of thousands of Chinese STEM students. Monday’s new proclamation fuels growing political tensions between the U.S. and China. It comes on the heels of a trade war, a COVID-19 blame game and a crackdown on foreign scientists (mainly Chinese) that has led to a great amount of unease among Chinese American scientists.

This clampdown on Chinese scientists has included a government-instigated investigation of foreign entities for interfering in the funding, research and peer review of the National Institutes of Health. This investigation has led to the dismissal of five Chinese researchers for “sharing grant proposals that they were reviewing, and for failing to disclose foreign funding and affiliations at institutions abroad.” This is a bit like jailing someone for plagiarism. The situation compelled MIT president L. Rafael Reif to write a letter to the entire MIT community expressing his dismay at the situation. In it, he asserted that MIT and the United States have flourished because MIT has been a magnet for the world’s finest talent, who in turn energize the institution as “the oxygen for our innovation.”

Without the foreign graduates and post-docs that decided to stay after coming here, U.S. science would be in a sad state. We should not lose touch with this very important talent pool. Our xenophobia is interfering with our scientific progress and limiting our scientific competitiveness.