One day in graduate school, I confessed to my fellow students that I had never been outside of the United States. They hailed from all over the world, so I was embarrassed to admit it. “You don’t need to leave the country,” one of them replied, “Here, the world comes to you!” In many ways, he was right. I didn’t need to leave Atlanta to have a global experience. My engineering graduate program included students, postdocs, and researchers from five continents—which isn’t especially unique for STEM programs nationwide.
The reason for this diversity is that the US government actively invested in our science and technology enterprise. These large-scale federal investments resulted in world-class research facilities and broad opportunities—in academia, the private sector, and national laboratories—that created a virtuous cycle: reliable funding attracts talented scientists and STEM talent from abroad, yielding progress and discovery that benefit us all, like decoding the human genome, developing modern computing, and finding cures for rare cancers.
None of this scientific progress—or our STEM prominence on the world stage—would have been possible without immigrants. Immigrants make our country great, and they make science great too. People come from around the world—uprooting their lives and moving their families—for an opportunity to study and advance scientific pursuits in the United States. And our country has historically been committed to recruiting and retaining this global scientific talent. To be true, there’s room for improvement when it comes to diversifying US STEM programs and advancing fair access and treatment of people of color in STEM fields, and we should be focused on this improvement, rather than tearing down the progress we’ve made.
Betraying our scientific colleagues
But now, the United States is turning its back on the very communities that helped build its global prominence in science and technology. Over the last year, the Trump administration has implemented a number of anti-immigrant policies to the detriment of STEM students, postdocs, faculty, and workers—with devasting impacts on research and progress itself.
The Trump administration has created hurdles for international students, including by revoking student F-1 visas, banning immigrants from six countries, and aggressively targeting major universities that enroll students from abroad. The administration also tried to cut the indirect costs that help sustain students and early career researchers in academic settings. The Trump administration has also made it harder for scientists and engineers to come here and stay by targeting H-1B visas, a critical tool for recruiting and retaining top talent in the sciences.
Scientists who speak up on these issues might face consequences such as losing their jobs or legal status or being deported. For example, Chinese researchers at Indiana University were deported under the guise of national security concerns, and their advisor who spoke out against the administration’s actions faced FBI searches and was locked out of his lab in an apparent act of retaliation. These acts will undoubtedly cause more and more scientists to question whether the United States is the right place for them. These attacks are in addition to the administration’s cuts to research grants and federal science at large, and the specific efforts to cancel funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion elements of scientific research, as my colleague Sonja Spears recently wrote about.
The Trump administration’s unlawful and cruel crusade against immigrant communities has involved Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) using racial profiling tactics and violently terrorizing people in the streets—particularly Black and Brown people. The administration claims they are going after criminals, but innocent people—including scientists—are getting caught in their dragnet. For example, a Colombian civil engineer in Maine with a valid H-1B visa was violently removed from his car, held for a day, and left hours from his home. Acts like these serve as a warning to international students to stay away and will have a chilling effect on our ability to welcome foreign scientists who fear for their safety.
Together, these Trump-era policies are affecting the US STEM talent pipeline and send a signal that the United States is now a more hostile environment for international researchers who might otherwise bring their talents here. With this backdrop, it’s no surprise that recent data show there has already been a 20% drop in enrollment of international students coming to the United States and major academic conferences are choosing host cities outside US borders. The latter move further hits US-based international students, who need conference presentations and networking opportunities for career growth, but may not want to risk a trip outside the United States for fear they won’t be let back in. Hostilities on multiple fronts.
A generational loss for American science and humanity
The consequences of the Trump administration’s actions on immigration will have profound adverse impacts over time in STEM fields. They’ll have impacts on our doctors, engineers, architects, and healthcare workers. Immigrants are our professors, classmates, mentors, and students. No matter where you live and what you do, you can be certain that your life has been made better by a foreign-born scientist in more ways than you’ll ever know.
In 2025, half of the US Nobel Prize winners in science were immigrants. Immigrants also play an outsized role in innovation—representing just 16% of inventors but authoring 23% of patents. The world needs science, and science needs the world.
For those of us in the scientific community, we should stand in unity with our international colleagues. Foreign-born scientists’ presence and contributions are woven into the fabric of the STEM experience in the United States, and the world benefits from their immense contributions. We owe it to them to loudly and proudly stand by their side, and insist that our institutions do, too.
In the years since my graduate experience, I’ve had the chance to travel beyond the borders of the United States. I’ve visited my graduate school colleagues in their home countries, and presented at international scientific conferences. From those experiences, I’ve gotten to see the global reach and deep respect of the American science enterprise on the global stage. We built something amazing with the US federal science and technology enterprise, thanks to the ingenuity and commitment of a global science community. We must defend it and all the people who comprise it, no matter where they’re from.