Strange IndiaStrange India


Almost half of all US graduate and postdoctoral trainees in science and engineering hold temporary visas (see go.nature.com/3fjj8qw). However, this group is being disenfranchised by archaic funding structures, immigration policies, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing problems of re-entering the country. We urge the US government to send a timely signal of openness to the international scientific community by increasing its efforts to recruit, fund and retain international trainees.

Almost all federal funding programmes are currently available only to US citizens and residents. These include key training grants such as the National Institutes of Health’s F30/F31/F32, and the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Alternative funding is waning: for example, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s International Student Research Fellowships programme made its final awards in 2016.

More than one-third of the Nobel prizes awarded to people in the United States have been won by immigrants. And immigrants file the majority of patents awarded to top US universities.

A proposed increase in science investment by the administration of President Joe Biden (Nature 592, 498–499; 2021) must help in ensuring that this indispensable part of the research workforce is not forgotten.

Competing Interests

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The authors declare no competing interests.



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