Stemming the American Brain Drain

A Capitol Hill briefing with the Bipartisan House R&D Caucus 

On Tuesday, July twenty second, 2025 the Federation of American Scientists hosted a bipartisan House Research and Development (R&D) Caucus Briefing – “Make America Great for Science: Stemming the American Brain Drain.” This well timed briefing introduced collectively Hill staffers and stakeholders in the science R&D group to debate the impacts of the current assault on the science expertise and workforce that energy the American R&D enterprise. 

Congressman Foster, Bipartisan R&D Caucus co-chair and the solely PhD physicist in Congress, gave remarks on the urgency of the second and a standing replace on how Congress is approaching the concern. A distinguished panel of material consultants throughout key domains in the subject shared their observations and insights which can be summarized beneath:

• Moderator. Gil Ruiz, Director of Government Affairs, Federation of American Scientists 
• Alex Rubin, Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution
• Cole Donovan, Associate Director of Science & Tech Ecosystems Development, Federation of American Scientists
• Amy Nice, Distinguished Immigration Counsel, Institute for Progress | Immigration Law and Policy Fellow, Cornell Law
• Brian Mosley, Associate Director, Computing Research Association

Science makes America nice. Scientists make science. And proper now, the U.S. isn’t a terrific house for the scientific enterprise. We are dropping our scientists and researchers to our opponents at unprecedented charges and subsequently dropping the very essence of what made America nice, and has saved it nice, all through our lifetimes. 

This erosion of the science and know-how workforce threatens U.S. financial competitiveness, nationwide safety, and international management. An absence of sustained federal funding, deteriorating analysis infrastructure and networks, restrictive immigration insurance policies, and waning worldwide collaboration are driving this erosion right into a full-scale “American Brain Drain.” 

Recommendations

As recognized on this briefing, stemming the mind drain and reclaiming the U.S. as the scientific middle of gravity would require: 

Federal Investment. Support for the federal analysis enterprise offers sources for scientists, nevertheless it additionally provides the United States a say in how American improvements and applied sciences are managed. We want to higher the efforts of what the U.S.’s main opponents are keen to do to safe American scientific expertise and develop their very own home workforce.

Modernizing R&D Infrastructure. Pass laws that improves analysis amenities like the Restoring and Modernizing our National Labs Act, guarantee aggressive pay and advantages for scientists, and reinvigorate worldwide collaboration on bold science objectives.

Reforming STEM Immigration Policies. Visa processing for STEM expertise wants transforming — from the starting levels with identification and focusing on of precedence workforces to the mechanisms that enable long-term residency. Current DHS insurance policies geared toward decreasing consumption of international expertise want reform, akin to ending the long-standing H-1B visa cap exemption for U.S. schools and universities. Legislation like the Keep STEM Talent Act must be superior. 

Science Comes from Scientists

Scientific innovation sprouts from the creativity of people and groups with novel concepts for scientific theories or merchandise. Federal funding or analysis infrastructure alone can’t supplant the expertise and inspiration drawn from scientific expertise. 

Policy boundaries like inexperienced card denials, federal funding challenges, and layoffs have pressured notable departures of scientists together with ChatGPT developer Kai Chen (moved to Canada), spaceflight security skilled Jonathan McDowell (moved to the UK), and carbon seize skilled Yi Shouliang (moved to China). 

Other nations are seizing the alternative to assert American scientific expertise as their very own. A senior NIH-funded scientist was supplied 20 years of funding in the PRC in ‘any city, any university’ after being minimize off from funding as a part of the current federal coverage actions.  

Global Competitiveness

In order to overhaul American management in key industries like AI and quantum computing, Chinese President Xi Jinping goes ‘all in’ on his wager that technology-based options may also help him deal with China’s myriad home challenges and push China towards international energy management. For instance, Xi’s “New Quality Productive Forces” framework leverages funding in and development from know-how industries to modernize China’s financial system, drive productiveness positive factors in conventional manufacturing sectors, get rid of dependencies on international nations for essential applied sciences, and safe management in frontier technology sectors.

The historical past of America’s international management in computing highlights the significance of federal funding in early-stage, scientific analysis. In many areas, analysis started in U.S. universities a few years earlier than the first merchandise had been launched. It can also repay in unanticipated methods, as developments in a single sector usually allow advances in others. Federal investments like these have demonstrated extraordinary payoff for the nation — in the explosion of recent applied sciences, and in the creation of recent industries, and tens of millions of recent jobs. 

Artificial intelligence, a know-how essential to international competitiveness, the analysis subject dates way back to the Forties and 50s, with many foundational breakthroughs taking place in the Nineteen Eighties and 90s. We are solely simply now reaping the advantages of many years of funding in AI analysis.

The U.S. as the Scientific “Center of Gravity” 

The United States is ceding its place as the “Center of Gravity” for international science that has made it the premier vacation spot for scientists and researchers throughout the world. Countries like the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and people in the European Union are investing heavily to draw U.S.-trained expertise and shift that gravitational pull in their favor. The U.S. should strengthen the techniques that made it the international science chief in the first place, if it hopes to rebalance that gravitational shift.

American science and know-how management is constructed upon a strong analysis ecosystem – what the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine described as “an extraordinarily productive interplay of U.S. universities doing federally funded research, industry and federal labs, and the flow of people and ideas between them.” 

Three components decide the place the science “center of gravity” is situated, and thus the place a scientist or engineer chooses to work and their prospects of success:

1. Pay and Benefits. “Can I get the support that I need in order to do my work?” Other nations are specializing in high quality of life to incentivize scientists. 
2. Access to amenities and different infrastructure. “Am I able to do my work in a safe and productive environment?” National labs, for instance, are going through large upkeep backlogs. 
3. Access to networks. “Are there collaborative networks such as getting to work with a particularly accomplished individual, or personal networks like family and friends?” the EU and China have invested closely in creating devices that facilitate worldwide scientific community improvement.

The International Talent Pipeline

International expertise and home expertise complement one another to attain outcomes unattainable with just one or the different. The share of international born professionals working in key industries has risen to 36% from 26% in 2000. Most of those professionals got here to the US via instructional applications and graduate faculty.

The worldwide science expertise pipeline in the U.S. is hampered by an outdated choice course of: only 7% of recent lawful everlasting residents every year are chosen primarily based on expertise and doable contributions to the nation. It can be working with an outdated H-1B visa choice program: large inexperienced card backlogs drive potential expertise to acquire H-1B visas first if they’ve a need to remain in the U.S. completely.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is transferring ahead with proposing coverage shifts that can harm the capacity of the U.S. to draw and retain expertise additional:

• International college students. DHS has a proposal under review now for publication that might get rid of eligibility for worldwide college students and post-doctoral fellows to keep up their standing for nevertheless lengthy their program lasts.
  • Instead, DHS will give all college students in any respect instructional ranges, in addition to post-doctoral fellows, a set time, no more than 4 years, that they’ll pay to have expanded by DHS.
• H-1B Salary Prioritization. A brand new DHS rule anticipated to be printed quickly as a proposed regulation would revise the H-1B lottery choice course of to prioritize greater salaries thus closing out H-1B eligibility for many early profession professionals together with newly minted Masters and PhDs incomes levels in the U.S.
• Post-Ed Occupational Training. DHS is engaged on a proposed rule to rescind all programs that present for worldwide college students incomes levels in the U.S. to have employment authorization for post-educational occupational coaching. 

As far again as early 2022, OECD had discovered that printed authors had been more and more migrating to China, and that that they had overtaken the United States–by a significant amount–in 2020. We know from a number of sources that China and the EU have develop into rather more engaging locations for researchers lately. 

As of 2024, the variety of worldwide students in the United States, as measured by the International Institute of Education’s Open Doors report, was down 18% towards 2018 ranges. Most of those information recommend that the inflection level for the United States happened after the 2018/2019 academic year. 

China has important expertise gaps that it’s aiming to fill with a mix of: (1) in the short-term, seeking to international academia; and (2) in the long-term, bolstering the home STEM schooling ecosystem.

• Short Term: The dangers from PRC actors may be damaged down into three concentric circles:
  • Inner Circle – smallest in scale, closest connection to the PRC authorities, navy, and intelligence.
    • i.e. PRC intelligence providers and co-optees; lower than a “percent of a percent” of Chinese college students and scientists in the U.S.
  • Middle Circle – medium scale, medium hyperlinks to the People’s Republic of China Intelligence Services (PRCIS) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
  • Outer Circle – largest scale, restricted hyperlinks to PRCIS/PLA, aggressive concern
    • i.e.  PRC abroad college students and researcher hyperlinks. The overwhelming majority of scholars search research for reputable causes. They come house to China for household, pay, and advantages.
• Long Term: schooling, schooling, schooling. Specifically, China is robustly investing in:
  • Ok-12 STEM Education
  • Vocational Schools
  • Postsecondary STEM schooling

Conclusion

The selection for the nation is obvious: both the United States continues to put money into the individuals and foundational analysis that has traditionally powered our progress, or the nation dangers falling behind our worldwide opponents and dropping out on the future. 

International STEM expertise is an integral part of the American scientific R&D enterprise, and with out it the home workforce will undergo and the total innovation ecosystem together with it. 

The aggressive actions and technique of China, Europe, and different opponents over the years in the direction of establishing dominance as the international science and know-how chief is a risk value taking severely, and our actions right here in the United States now and in the close to future will decide if they’re profitable or not. The science group should talk the urgency of this second to the public, and push policymakers to make the investments and insurance policies essential to preserve and entice the biggest scientific expertise in the U.S. 

Additional Recommendations and Reading 

Bringing Transparency to Federal R&D Infrastructure Costs. Using the NIST for example, the Radiation Physics Building (nonetheless with out the funding to finish its renovation) is essential to nationwide safety and the medical group. If it had been to go down (or away), each medical gadget in the United States that makes use of radiation could be decertified inside 6 months, creating a big single level of failure that can’t be rapidly mitigated.

Agenda for an American Renewal. America is in want of a brand new financial paradigm that renews and refreshes quite than dismantles its hard-won geopolitical and technological benefits. The commerce paradigm should help manufacturing communities and their core strengths.

Fortifying America’s Future: Pathways for Competitiveness. For the U.S. to keep up our aggressive benefit, nationwide safety professionals should associate with educators, and “we should make investments each in the sectors which can be most crucial to our nationwide safety…and, importantly, in the human expertise that can help these sectors and the improvements to return.

National Security AI Entrepreneur Visa. Congress should act to help high-skilled entrepreneurs by making a National Security Startup Visa particularly focused at founders of AI corporations whose know-how is inherently dual-use and important for America’s financial management and nationwide safety.

Building an Evergreen $1B Fund for S&T Career Advancement. Since its creation 20 years in the past, the ACWIA fund has been a precious and dependable useful resource to help STEM workforce coaching and teaching programs at DOL and NSF. Congress ought to develop this annual funding stream to $1 billion—without charge to taxpayers—by modernizing the ACWIA price construction to maintain  up with inflation and replicate the measurement of the giant companies petitioning for many H-1B professionals.

A Digital Military Talent Initiative for Noncitizen Technologists. A brand new Digital Military Talent Initiative may assist deal with the navy’s digital-talent hole by offering an expedited path to U.S. citizenship via navy service for noncitizen technologists aligned to NSCAI archetypes. Modernization of an already-existing DOD program and navy enlistment coverage updates may infuse digital expertise by offering vetted noncitizens a pathway to accelerated naturalization via navy service.

What Happens When the Nuts and Bolts of Science Diplomacy Come Loose? The United States has centered on stopping the switch of delicate know-how to adversarial nations quite than on enhancing its capacity to collaborate internationally.

World Scientists Look Elsewhere as U.S. Labs Stagger Under Trump Cuts. With the welcome mat withdrawn for promising researchers from round the world, America is susceptible to dropping its longstanding pre-eminence in the sciences.