Other Nations Stand Ready To Accept Next Generation Of Foreign Scientists America Is Rejecting

Researchers, academic officials and science policy makers are expressing alarm at President Trump’s order barring entry to the United States to people from certain predominantly Muslim countries, saying it could hinder research, affect recruitment of top scientists and dampen the free exchange of scientific ideas.

The executive order, issued on Friday and clarified somewhat over the weekend by administration officials, potentially affects thousands of students and researchers from Iran, Iraq and five other countries. Foreigners fill the undergraduate and especially graduate ranks at many American universities, and newly minted Ph.D.s from overseas flock to the United States for research and teaching positions in academic laboratories.

Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the Association of American Universities, said that by one estimate, there were about 17,000 students from the seven countries at American universities. “I’m concerned about it hampering our ability to recruit outstanding graduate students,” said Samuel L. Stanley Jr., the president of Stony Brook University on Long Island. Dr. Stanley spent the weekend monitoring the work of immigration lawyers in a successful effort to release a Stony Brook graduate student from Iran, Vahideh Rasekhi, who was en route to Kennedy Airport when the order was issued and was detained after she landed.

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“Immigration into the United States is tremendously important to science,” said Soumya Raychaudhuri, a Harvard Medical School professor whose Iranian postdoctoral researcher, Samira Asgari, was barred on Saturday from boarding a flight to begin her job in his laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “There are other countries competing for this talent pool, and walking away from that jeopardizes our standing.” Some foreign universities, while condemning the ban, also pointed out that they still welcomed students and researchers from anywhere. The University of British Columbia announced the establishment of a task force, with an initial budget of 250,000 Canadian dollars (about $190,000), “to determine what assistance the university can offer those affected.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/science/scientists-donald-trump-travel-ban.html?_r=0