Trump to suspend new visas for foreign scholars

Trump to suspend new visas for foreign scholars



President Trump has issued new immigration restrictions that will affect STEM workers. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty)

Trump to suspend new visas for scholars

The United States will not issue H-1B visas for the rest of the year. Tens of thousands of university researchers and industrial scientists and engineers use the visas to enter the country each year. The Trump administration says the suspension will help to prioritize the US workforce during the pandemic. Exemptions are possible, but the path ahead is not clear for foreigners working in or hoping to work in the United States. “It is really sad that when this country has so many of the greatest research institutions in the world, greatest universities in the world, that when something like a pandemic happens, one of the first things the government does is to blame international researchers for unemployment,” says Mehmet Doğan, a Turkish physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. “That’s crazy, but it’s also very sad.”

Nature | 4 min read

30%	The proportion of people in science and engineering jobs in the United States who were born outside the country, according to the National Science Foundation. (Nature | 4 min read)