Immigrant Heritage Month: Celebrating Heroes Within the US Scientific Community

Why Immigration Reform is Central to the Future Success of US Science

In September 2019, over a dozen foreign students got ready to board flights for the US. It wasn’t a vacation: they were going to join graduate programs at American universities, and perform research in fields like computer science and engineering. Each of them had undergone lengthy screening processes to earn their student visas. But, at the last minute, all their visas were canceled by US officials. No reason was given. The only thing these students had in common, besides exemplary talent in the sciences, was their nationality: Iranian.

For nearly 100 years, the US has been the global leader in scientific research, a position predicated upon its ability to pull in the greatest minds from across the world. Between 1901 and 2015, over 40 percent of all Nobel Prizes have gone to Americans, nearly a third of whom were foreign-born. But this scientific dominance is threatened by increasingly restrictive immigration policies, from the security measures designed in the wake of 9/11 to the contentious travel ban ordered by the Trump Administration. Foreign applications to graduate-level scientific programs in America have fallen since 2017.

Imagine if Einstein’s initial entry into the US had been denied. With America’s current immigration laws, something like that could easily happen. Even worse, it might have already.

Science is collaborative. It requires the exchange of different ideas, information, and viewpoints in order to bear results. These exchanges can’t be done solely online. Science is global, but also highly differentiated, with experts in seemingly obscure fields of study scattered across the planet. America’s dominance in the field of science has come, in part, from its ability to not only send its scientists abroad, but also in its ability to lure scientists to research and train at America’s top research facilities.

The American Society for Cell Biology’s Recommendations on Immigration

When one achieves dominance for an extended period of time, there’s a natural tendency towards complacency. But scientific innovation isn’t a field that’s forgiving to such an attitude. Accordingly, in 2017, the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) renewed a call for immigration reform by laying out four recommendations:

1. Ease restrictions on foreign travel by visa holders. The collaborative and international nature of science, as a discipline, demands that researchers travel abroad. Travel restrictions for visa holders limit their opportunities for educational or professional advancement, deprive scientific conferences of key voices, restrict the ability of researchers to collaborate with other specialists, and impede meaningful scientific exchange. Easing these restrictions would nurture the scientific talent already admitted to the US and lure in more.
2. Match visa durations to training time. The current visa regime is messy, with many international students arriving in the US on an F-1 visa, proceeding to postdoctoral training on a J-1 visa, and then finally completing professional training on an H1-B visa. The bureaucracy between steps is needlessly cumbersome: those who hold a J-1 visa often have to halt their studies and research in order to return to their home country (sometimes for up to two years) before applying for and receiving the necessary H1-B visa. A more seamless process would streamline America’s scientific innovation.
3. Base the supply of H1-B visas on market demands. Despite the demand for H1-B visas growing by as much as 20 percent year over year, the number of such visas issued has remained at a static 65,000 per year. That means that the US is ignoring what could be an even larger influx of scientific talent. Unless a more proportional number of H1-B visas are issued, that scientific talent is going to go elsewhere. Other nations are already increasing their version of these visas, and a failure for the US to keep pace would see it fall further behind.
4. Give foreign students green cards upon completion of their studies. Currently, American immigration policy makes it difficult for international students who are trained in the US to stay in the country. Furthermore, many American companies don’t offer visa support. As a result, many highly talented international students return to their home country and compete against the US, instead of for it. This is an abject loss: if the US trains and educates an international student, it should also seek to reap the benefit of their work. Offering freshly-minted PhDs a green card would incentivize scientific talent to stay and work in the US.

Objectively, it’s an attractive bargain: you encourage the most brilliant people in the world to come to your country and in return, they work for you and make discoveries on your behalf. It’s so attractive, in fact, that every country in the world is offering some form of it to young scientific talent.

America’s offer isn’t necessarily the best out there, but this country’s history of dominance in the areas of scientific research has so far made up for what’s lacking. But without reforms to its immigration policies, that dominance won’t last. Over three-quarters of US adults already believe the country should encourage the immigration of highly skilled workers. Policymakers should wise up and listen to their constituents.