Short Wave - The International Scientists Getting Pushed Out

Episode Date: September 8, 2020

About 30% of people in science and engineering jobs in the U.S. were born outside the country. So when the Trump Administration suspended certain work visas in June, including one held by a lot of international scientists, research labs across the nation felt the effects. On the show, we talk to a physicist affected by the order, and The Chronicle of Higher Education's Karin Fischer about what policies like this mean for science research in the U.S.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. First, there was the travel ban. There's been chaos and confusion at airports around the world tonight after America. These seven Muslim majority countries, here's the map. And then the Trump administration froze green cards for new immigrants until the end of this year. The announcement came in a late-night tweet. President Trump saying he intends to close the U.S. to immigrants. Then some Chinese graduate students and researchers were single.

out. On May 29th, President Trump announced a proclamation to suspend entry to graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who attended universities affiliated with the Chinese military. So I was kind of psychologically prepared. Emmett Doan had heard the rumors of what might be coming next. He grew up in Turkey and came to the U.S. for his Ph.D. in 2010 and is now working as a postdoc in the physics department at UC Berkeley. So it wasn't a shock when in June, the administration's blocked visas for a wide variety of jobs, including the H-1B visa, which is what a lot of tech workers and scientists like Mehmet were hoping to get.

I try to be more in peace with uncertainty, and this is what I've been trying to do for the past couple of years. It's been a struggle for Mehmet to do his research in the United States. One time, he got stuck outside of the country for nine months because of a visa issue, right before he was supposed to start his business. job. And then now, Mehmet has an approval for an H-1B visa and was just one step away from getting it activated when the executive order came down. And that makes any kind of life planning really hard. It's unfair to my spouse to put her through the same thing for my own career choices. For instance,

we are unable to really contemplate having children at this point with all. all of this uncertainty because we don't even know where we're going to be living in the next year. In addition to figuring out his own situation, Mehmet has been organizing with his postdoc union to help other international scientists deal with the confusion and fear caused by the visa ban. He's heard lots of stories. A researcher wanting to visit her elderly parents in New Zealand, but worried about leaving the country and not getting back in. another researcher who did travel out of the country this spring, and so far has not been able to come back. We have been very active in creating spaces where people can share their stories,

can help each other out, share information, and just be connected to each other, because it is really difficult to handle as an individual. That's not something we get taught in school. It's a lot to deal with. It sucks up a tremendous amount. of emotional energy and time. And Mehmet says, of course it's taken a toll on his research.

I have to sit down in front of my computer and do my research every day. But there's a world of uncertainty out there. Every day some new policy comes out and it makes it difficult to focus. A recent National Science Foundation report found that nearly 30% of people in science and engineering jobs in the U.S. were born outside the country. country. Basically, a lot of science in the U.S. depends on scientists born outside of it, which is why Mehmet finds the visa ban especially maddening. I think it is really absurd that majority of research is funded by the federal government,

which then turns around and blocks people from coming into the country and doing that research. Today on the show, the rationale behind the June visa, ban and how policies like this are affecting international scientists and scientific enterprise in the U.S. You're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR. We'll hear more from Mehmet Doan, the Turkish physicist at UC Berkeley. But first, I called up Karen Fisher at the Chronicle of Higher Education. She covers the international scientist's pipeline and has been closely following the administration's recent visa policies, which she says have thrown a bomb in the life plans of many folks.

Quite often, the people who come here and end up working here and immigrating here, this is a path that begins years and years and years earlier. Students and their families typically begin planning to come and study in the United States when they're in high school, even if they might not come to graduate school. A few weeks ago, the administration came out with exemptions to the June visa bank, which Karen says could open the door for certain skilled workers in high-demand fields. For example, if someone was renewing an H-1B while keeping a job with the same employer. But the situation is complicated and hard to parse.

Even Karen, a reporter who covers this kind of stuff, says she has trouble understanding how it will work on the ground. It's been very difficult and it's almost even still hard for me to sort of make these general statements because the more people that I talk to and I start to understand their individual cases, you start to realize how the application of this is really highly dependent on the individual circumstances. So, Karen, I understand that the H-1B visas are part of kind of this, like, larger ecosystem in which international scientists come to work in the U.S. Can you give a picture of how the broader international scientist pipeline kind of works? I guess I would say there's two sort of typical routes into the pipeline. One is just people

coming to the U.S. strictly for work educated elsewhere. But there's a significant pipeline that comes through the U.S. higher education system. And so more than a million students come here to study every year, or at least they did before the pandemic. And COVID, I think, will be a significant hit on those numbers. And then many of them, especially those who come at the graduate level, and particularly at the doctoral level, stay. And this is particularly true in the sciences, where if you look at fields like computer science, mathematics, many engineering fields, probably about 60% of the graduates, the people who earn doctorates in those fields are foreign-born and have come here on student visas. And so that sort of pathway, it is a pipeline

that begins now increasingly with students coming as undergraduates and staying, maybe taking some time out and working, and then becoming people who, you know, becoming part of pretty much the permanent workforce in the United States. So this policy essentially freezes this particular pathway in that pipeline, at least until the end of the year. Exactly. I mean, yes, It's set to expire at the end of the year. Certainly the elections will have a lot of effect on what happens. But I think it's also what is the message that this sends and what's then the perception that students kind of entering that pipeline, what assumptions are they making?

Yeah. What rationale did the Trump administration give for restricting these visas? So the context for this particular executive order was the coronavirus pandemic. And so it was meant to specifically respond to employment issues caused by the pandemic. And that's really what the administration has argued, that when unemployment is increasing so much in the United States, then it does not make sense to be admitting workers from overseas when Americans need jobs. I think the real challenge is that when you look historically at H-1B visas, there's been a real mismatch between the types of jobs and the general fields that people on H1B

visas tend to fill and the places in which there is real employment demands. And so places where American workers are tending to not be hired and when you look at where unemployment rates are the highest, even during COVID, unemployment is much higher among non-college educated workers in the United States. So basically what you're saying, Karen, is the people, that are losing jobs because of the pandemic are not necessarily going to be able to step into these positions that, you know, that international scientists, let's, I wouldn't say take up, but are actually practicing it and working in. They're disproportionately in the tech industry

and in the sciences. I mean, many of these people are computer engineers. They're, they're research scientists and postdocs at universities. They're people who have advanced degrees and very specialized training. And this is even pre-pendemics. So I know that there's a fear because of policies like these, that the U.S. might essentially lose its competitive edge, you know, in science and innovation, because international scientists might choose to work in other countries that are a little more friendly or don't put up so many barriers for them to come, like countries like Canada, Australia, you know, the UK. I mean, what exactly are the concerns here? And what does the research say about these anxieties?

So I think the concerns exist on a couple of different levels. Prior to this executive order, there's been some evidence that the United States may be starting to lose some skilled workers. I think the other thing that people worry about is, does this actually? begin to to undercut Americas and American colleges, competitiveness in attracting top students worldwide. You know, if you want to get a job, whether you're an international student or American student, you know, it helps to network and have internships and make those connections from the time that you're in college. And so will younger students decide not to come to the US in the first place because they think, well, if I'm not going to be able to, in the long

term, build a career there, maybe I should actually go someplace where I can, I can see that pathway for myself in the long term. Yeah. I mean, what kind of message do you think that this is sending to international scientists? Because there's what the administration says it wants and what it, you know, what it's about. And then there's the message that kind of comes across, right? Yeah, I mean, actually, that's a good point. I mean, the administration has in fact talked about the importance of high-skilled immigration. And a couple of years ago during the state of the union, the president talked about trying to prioritize people like the very folks who are being blocked from getting visas by the recent executive order. And so I think there's maybe a little bit of whiplash. And certainly there's a lot of uncertainty about. how open the United States is going to be in the long term. That said, I would still say American science is highly, highly regarded, and I do talk with students and younger career scientists all the time

who on one hand are very concerned about things about these policy changes and the shifts. On the other, they understand that in terms of collaboration and support and being able to come here and be side by side in laboratories with just incredibly brilliant people from around the world, that the United States still is a destination. And so I don't want to just be sounding alarmist because I do think the United States retains a large amount of attractiveness to scientists around the globe. For Emmett Doan, he says the recent exemptions to the June visa ban might not. not apply for his case. He's not sure where his situation stands. So he and his wife are considering leaving the country, maybe going to Canada, because he thinks the message to international scientists

is clear. You may have everything in order. You may have gone through interviews, lots of job applications. You may have impressed a professor so that they would hire you. You may have done everything right. And yet, Memet says, as the administration has showed in policy, anything can happen at any time, including getting your visa category suspended.

You wouldn't be able to come and do the research for an unspecified amount of time. It wouldn't be clear whether the grant would continue to hold for you. Everything would be up in the air. This is

one of the things that motivates me to do. outreach like this because I want people to understand these difficulties because as non-citizens, our voice is not strong. We cannot vote. We cannot participate in the political process. So that's why I want to educate American public and U.S. citizen researchers so that they would try to make things better for all of us. A big thanks to Mehmet Doan and Karen Fisher. Thank you for having me on. Thanks for talking with me, too. This episode was produced by Yo-Wei Shah, fact-checked by Emily Kwong, and edited by Debra George.

We'll be back tomorrow with more shortwave from NPR.