Texas spent billions recruiting scientists from around the world to turn the state into a cancer-research powerhouse. Now, nearly six months after Gov. Greg Abbott restricted public institutions’ use of the H-1B visa program, cancer advocates and immigration attorneys warn the policy could undercut that strategy.
At MD Anderson Cancer Center, researchers holding H-1B work visas explore why tumors resist treatment, test new drugs and use artificial intelligence to analyze tissue cell by cell. Records obtained by The Texas Tribune show the Houston institution sponsors 277 workers through the program.
Across Texas, 44 public universities, health centers and system offices reported sponsoring 3,332 H-1B workers to the Texas Workforce Commission. The higher education institutions had to detail their use of such employees as part of Abbott’s directive.
The records do not establish whether Abbott’s policy has disrupted research, clinical trials or patient care. But Lore Gruenbaum, chief scientific officer and senior vice president of research at Blood Cancer United, said these types of restrictions send “a chilling message that foreign-born researchers are less welcome” at a time when institutions already face difficulty recruiting and retaining young scientists.
Gruenbaum estimated that foreign-born students make up more than 40% of the graduate-student pool in biomedical research and at least half of postdoctoral trainees.
“If we don’t have that talent pool available, the quality and the scope and the impact of the research that can be done will very likely decrease,” she said.
There’s more, but this is enough to make a simple statement that I can’t believe I have to say: We should cut government red tape to allow these highly beneficial engines of our economy do what they do best. There’s a limited number of people in the world who have the talent and the drive to do what these people do. For a long time, they flocked to the US because they were able to get top-notch college educations followed by prestigious graduate degrees, and then they went to work in the best scientific research academies in existence. And we all benefitted from that arrangement, whether any of us needed or had a loved one who needed a medicine or treatment or surgical procedure they pioneered or not. And now, thanks to the racist shitweasels in Washington and their craven enablers in the states like Greg Abbott, we are in the process of throwing that all away, for nothing.
That’s what this is about. We can do a small something about it this November, and a bigger one in two years. It’s up to us.
I came to Houston to go to graduate school, then worked for 20 years at MD Anderson. I was always so very proud that so many people from all over the world wanted to come to Houston to work on science and medicine. The last lab group I was in was evenly split between Americans and foreign nationals, and we all had a great time with each other sharing our cultural quirks and foibles (like explaining “Freedom Fries” to a lab mate from Belgium”. Or truck nuts to a lab mate from Taiwan. Good times).
There are many valid reasons for me to hate the trump regime, from the ICE goons murdering people with impunity, to the shameless open corruption, to the voter suppression, to the erosion of American soft power, to another unnecessary war, and I could go on much longer. But the attack on science is what is the most personal for me, and I will never forgive and never forget.
Well said Fly, and I completely agree.
My institution is now in the process of deciphering the exact rules of the recently announced 4-year cap on foreign national Ph.D. students. For example, does it apply to existing Ph.D. students or just incoming Ph.D. students? Our STEM foreign national MS student enrollments, which used to fund many of our STEM programs, have fallen off a cliff. My engineering department lost roughly one-third of its full-time faculty, and its replacing less than half of those who left or retired. It’s a mess that didn’t need to happen.
Heard last week from a UH grad student that the Math Dept lost 11 faculty members, all thanks to the current xenophobia. The brain drain is real.