Survey: Trump immigration policies fueling scientific brain drain

The budding scientist had left India for the U.S. for her Ph.D., because as she saw it, no other country offered the same opportunities for researchers. Set to finish her doctorate this summer, she also had a postdoctoral fellowship lined up in America.

Now those plans have changed. New and intrusive burdens for renewing a component of her visa — which required her to make public her social media profiles for U.S. review while she was back in India — caused her to be away from the lab for two months during the crunch time of wrapping up her degree. 

Being on a visa in the U.S. always carried uncertainty, she said, and the renewal did come through. But the greater unpredictability of the Trump administration’s immigration machinery, and the added friction layered into the system, became a sticking point for her. Instead of gearing up for the postdoc, and perhaps needing to go through more visa entanglements, she will return to India to start a job at a biotech company after earning her Ph.D. 

“This process is just not worth it for me,” said the student, who asked that her name and institution be withheld because she’s still finishing her work. 

The student’s story, which was verified by her lab leader, embodies fears that the administration’s heightened immigration scrutiny, on top of its cuts to many research programs, will make the U.S. — long the paragon of global scientific inquiry — a less attractive place for international researchers to train and establish their careers. Emerging data provide a glimpse of how those concerns are being realized.

In a recent STAT survey of nearly 1,000 U.S. researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health, 14% of respondents reported that changes in immigration policies had forced scientists, students, and postdocs to turn down offers to work in their labs, and 13% said their labs had lost researchers to other countries as a result of NIH funding changes. Moreover, on this year’s Match Day, when medical school graduates are assigned to residencies, the match rate for international graduates who would need a visa hit a five-year low — a possible indication that medical centers are less willing to allocate a spot to a trainee who might run into problems getting to the U.S.

“I understand their view — you can’t give someone a high ranking if they can’t enter the country,” said Eyas Mohammedalamin, who did not match into a U.S. residency program after completing medical school in his native Sudan, which is on an administration travel ban list. 

STAT surveyed 989 researchers from Jan. 28 to Feb. 18, and in follow-up phone calls and emails, the scientists, including the Indian student’s lab head, described a range of impacts that immigration policy changes have had on students and trainees. Some requested their names be withheld, for reasons that included their institutions telling them not to speak publicly about the topic, protecting their lab members, and worries about possible retribution from federal officials at a fragile moment for research funding.

Labs are seeing fewer applications from international students and researchers, which they attributed to the immigration and research environment in the U.S. Trainees already in the U.S. on visas are scared to travel home or to overseas conferences — a key opportunity for meeting others in their fields — out of concern they might not be let back into the U.S. Some doctoral students are considering leaving their programs if they’ve completed enough of it to have earned a master’s degree, according to lab leaders.  

“It is going to cause a long-term brain drain — international scholars will stay closer to home,” said Matthew Alexander, an associate professor of pediatric neurology and genetics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “They’ll stay in Europe and they’ll stay in Asia. There are good institutions there too.” 

Sometimes, researchers said, it’s taking so long for people to obtain visas that they can’t assume the positions that they’ve been selected for. In turn, that’s making labs less open to offering spots to people who need visas because they can’t risk having jobs go unfilled. 

“Their lives are becoming somewhat dystopian, and I feel so ashamed and bad for them,” said one researcher, who has had international trainees leave his lab, whether to return home or for positions in other countries. 

In the past, an international student or trainee would sometimes hit a snag with a visa application, scientists said. But researchers and lawyers said they’re seeing more delays and roadblocks. It’s taking far longer to schedule visa appointments, and applicants are having to open up their social media profiles to the government. Immigration officials are more often requiring scientists to submit additional evidence when applying for green cards.

“We are facing challenges at all phases of the game,” said Jenny Bouta Mojica, an immigration attorney who works with academic institutions.

The Trump administration has argued that its heightened scrutiny of visa applicants will improve the country’s safety, and said that past screening efforts “were wholly inadequate.” Officials have also said that people from countries now subject to travel bans or visa restrictions have historically overstayed their visas. “This administration is slamming the door shut on the foreign invaders who have undermined our national security,” the Department of Homeland Security said in announcing an expanded travel ban last year. 

Visa fees and travel bans erect new obstacles

While the Trump administration’s actions are having seismic impacts on immigration broadly, some of the policy changes are more directly affecting the research and medical fields.

Many international doctors, for example, are on H-1B visas, as are some postdocs (though postdocs are often on a different visa, the J-1). But the administration in September announced that employers would have to start paying an additional $100,000 fee for H-1B visas for people newly coming to the U.S., saying that the abuse and expansiveness of the program was hurting job opportunities for Americans.

Medical groups have asked DHS to clarify that doctors and trainees should be exempt from the fee, noting that international clinicians help counter the country’s physician shortage and that they often work in underserved areas.

But while the policy announcement said it would allow for exemptions if the hiring “is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States,” lawyers said it’s still not clear how exemptions will work in reality. 

“Is that going to be nonprofit research organizations? Is it going to be biomedical?” said Brendan Delaney, an immigration attorney. “We just don’t know.”

In President Trump’s first term, his administration also created obstacles for scientists and doctors hoping to come to the U.S. But this time, the moves are more far-reaching. The first iteration of the travel ban in 2017, for instance, targeted seven countries. This go-round, there are some three dozen countries from which travel is banned or where visas are restricted. 

Mohammedalamin, the Sudanese medical school graduate, said he had set his sights on a U.S. residency because it would offer the best training, and he would be able to support his family by working as a doctor in the U.S. “You want to be not just a good doctor, but an amazing one,” he said.

The aspiring pediatrician said that during his interviews with residency programs, he was asked if he had dual citizenship or some other way he could get into the U.S., which is why he thinks his being from Sudan played a role in not matching anywhere. 

For several months, Mohammedalamin has been doing an internship in Egypt, having left Sudan because of the war there. He’s now exploring options in Europe, South Africa, and Australia, or may go back to Sudan.

“You don’t stop just because one country stops you from reaching that level,” he said. 

The travel ban is even affecting scientists and doctors who are already in the U.S. After completing their programs, Ph.D. students can transition onto a form of employment authorization known as OPT (for optional practical training) that allows them to stay in the U.S. for several more years, whether continuing on in academia or in industry. There are questions, researchers said, about whether people who are from countries on the restricted travel list will be allowed to move from their student visas onto OPT. One lab leader told STAT he has a student from one of the banned countries who is slow-walking graduating to avoid such an issue.

The Trump administration has also frozen the processing of visas and work authorizations for people from those countries, even if they’re in the U.S. Now some physicians have entered a limbo where they’ve applied for renewals of their immigration credentials, but haven’t heard back, meaning they don’t currently have clearance to work. It’s forced them off the job, threatening patient care and causing headaches for their clinics and hospitals. The issue has attracted increasing media attention in recent weeks, as medical groups have warned of the disruptions for patients and called for expedited processing to start. 

“Why are their visas being messed with if they’re already here, already in training, already doing what they’re supposed to be doing?” said Susan Edionwe, the president of the U.S.-based Nigerian Physicians Advocacy Group. (Nigeria is one of the countries facing travel restrictions.) “We have a national physician shortage. We know that these trainees will go to rural communities and give care. It’s hurting Americans.” 

The Trump administration has said the Biden administration did not vet visa applicants thoroughly, requiring more diligent screening now, particularly for people from countries the government considers to be an extra risk. 

U.S. still seen as ‘land of opportunity’

The burdens facing international doctors and scientists have stoked fears that the U.S. will start losing out to other countries. As one Nigerian physician, who is in his internal medicine residency and hasn’t been able to work for weeks, told STAT, “If I was done with my residency, honestly, I would have been out of here.”

But others said that, while some people are certainly leaving the U.S. or would no longer head there, the country still has so many of the best hospitals and research institutions, and, despite the recent upheaval, still devotes so much more to science than other countries. The distinction that comes with having trained or worked in the U.S. has not diminished.  

For example, in this year’s Match, while fewer aspiring residents who would have needed a visa were successful in getting into a program, the number of non-citizen international medical graduates applying to U.S. residences overall increased by 4.2%.

“People do still recognize that the U.S. is the land of opportunity,” said the Ph.D. student who is heading back to India. 

The student noted that she might not be leaving the U.S. if, for example, she was still early on in her doctorate. The immigration headaches happened to come at a good time for her to make a change, she said. But she also said that the chances to build a scientific career in India have improved since she went abroad.

“I came to the U.S. for opportunities,” she said. “If I can find opportunities that are at par in India, why would I not take them?”

How the survey was done

STAT and MassINC Polling Group surveyed 989 researchers from 45 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico between Jan. 28 and Feb. 18. The survey was emailed to about 41,000 NIH-funded scientists, relying on a public database of grant recipients in 2022. Only the 97% of respondents who said they had active grants in 2025 were asked questions about specific grant impacts. The results were weighted based on each researcher’s total NIH funding and their region of the country, and the margin of error for questions asked of the full sample is 3.3 percentage points.

STAT’s coverage of the federal government’s impact on the biomedical workforce is supported by a grant from the Dana Foundation and the Boston Foundation. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.