A new White House report criticizes the immigration of scientists to America, arguing it’s bad whether international students stay or leave the country. The opinion expressed, though contrary to the consensus views of educators and economists, is consistent with the Trump administration’s immigration policies. In July, the Department of Homeland Security finalized a rule that restricts international students to four years in the United States unless they obtain an extension. A Sept. 2025 proclamation imposed a $100,000 fee on the entry of new H-1B visa holders, and a proposed rule could make many H-1B visa holders and employment-based immigrants too expensive to hire due to new prevailing wage levels.

Among doctorate holders (Ph.D.’s) in the United States performing research and development as a major work activity, 87% in electrical engineering and 79% in computer and information sciences are foreign-born, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis of the National Survey of College Graduates (2023).

Immigrants are responsible for 32% of aggregate innovation in America, over half of which is due to making their U.S.-born collaborators more innovative, according to the model developed by economists Shai Bernstein (Harvard), Rebecca Diamond (Harvard), Abhisit Jiranaphawiboon (Stanford), Timothy McQuade (UC-Berkeley) and Beatriz Pousada (Stanford).

A New White House Report Criticizes The Immigration Of Scientists

A new report to the president argues that the United States loses out by admitting international students who earn a Ph.D. “For decades, the United States has funded large cohorts of foreign students and tolerated technology transfer abroad under lax security standards,” according to the report authored by Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “As of 2024, temporary visa holders accounted for around half of U.S. doctoral graduates in computer science and mathematics with confirmed postgraduation plans.”

The report argues that U.S. students are “sidelined.” The White House report states, “This reliance on foreign talent sidelines American students, a deep domestic talent pool that remains under-supported by its own government.” The statement is not supported by U.S. government and other research on the topic.

According to the National Science Foundation (2007), “An increase in enrollment of 1.0 foreign students is associated with an enrollment increase of 0.33 for white U.S. students, an increase of 0.02 for U.S. underrepresented minority students, and a decrease of 0.07 for U.S. Asian students. With the exception of the odd, if small, decrease for U.S. Asians, an increase in enrollment for one group is associated with increases in enrollment for all groups— a result inconsistent with displacement .” (Emphasis added.)

A study by Kevin Shih, currently an economics professor at the University of California, Riverside, produced even stronger results, concluding “foreign graduate students increase native enrollment.” Shih’s research findings “suggest that an additional foreign student leads to one additional native.”

The White House report also argues that it is bad when international students leave the United States. “At the same time, we train extraordinary global talent at enormous expense, only to lose this effort when foreign governments recruit them to build up their own technological enterprises. The interest of vast scores of Americans in using taxpayer dollars to invest in our STEM pipeline has, consequently, eroded.” The report does not cite a source to support the claim that support for investing in the STEM pipeline has “eroded.”

According to the National Science Foundation, the long-term stay rate for U.S. science and engineering doctoral degree recipients with temporary visas at graduation is approximately 68%, much higher than implied by the report’s statement about individuals recruited by foreign governments.

The report also asserts, “America’s over-reliance on foreign students also creates a security challenge our institutions are ill-equipped to address.”

“The White House report treats foreign students earning advanced degrees in America as a threat to American science while here in school, a threat if they stay to work in America and a threat if they leave after graduation,” said Mark Regets, a labor economist and senior fellow at the National Foundation for American Policy, in an interview. “The reality is that American science gains from all three of these things. They invigorate our grad programs, provide valuable brains for our research and development, and connect us to the majority of the research done elsewhere in the world.”

Regets points to data showing the number of U.S.-born workers in STEM fields has grown more rapidly than the labor force as a whole at the bachelor’s and Ph.D. levels. “It is not true that we are not funding American talent, but our needs for the most highly skilled talent have grown even faster,” he said.

“Foreign graduate students create opportunities for American students rather than take them away,” said Regets. “Many graduate programs would close their doors without foreign students, and the research done within those programs would not be done without graduate student labor.”

According to an NFAP study by Madeline Zavodny, an economics professor at the University of North Florida, “Without immigrants, international students and the children of immigrants, the undergraduate student population in America would be almost 5 million students smaller in 2037 than 2022, or about two-thirds of its current size, while the graduate student population would be at least 1.1 million students smaller, or only about 60% of its current size.”

White House Report Echoes Vance And Miller On Immigration

The administration’s science report offers arguments similar to those made against immigration by Vice President JD Vance and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Vance spoke of how America landed on the moon largely without immigrants, and Miller said, “During the middle of the 20th century—when the U.S. achieved unquestioned global scientific dominance—there was net zero migration.”

Analysts point out that Miller’s statement overlooks the significant scientific achievements produced by immigrants in the post-war period. Between 1945 and 1974, 16 of the 30 U.S. winners of the Nobel Prize in physics were immigrants, according to NFAP. During those same years, 15 of the 36 U.S. Nobel Prizes in medicine were awarded to immigrants. Albert Sabin, an immigrant from Poland, and Jonas Salk, the son of an immigrant, developed the vaccines that ended polio as a threat to Americans.

More recently, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis, “Immigrants have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics since 2000.”

The administration’s science report makes other arguments. “The Manhattan Project succeeded not only because of brilliant physicists, but because we built new institutions capable of coordinating the activity of thousands across the basic science and immense engineering challenges needed to build the bomb,” according to the White House report. “The Apollo Program reached the Moon because NASA could marshal resources and talent in ways no university or company could match. Each represented not merely new funding, but fundamentally new ways of organizing scientific work.”

The report overlooks the role of immigrants in these endeavors. German scientists who came to America after World War II were instrumental in the United States landing men on the moon. According to NASA , “Dr. Wernher von Braun was one of the most important rocket developers and champions of space exploration in the twentieth century. . . von Braun became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that would propel Americans to the Moon.”

Immigrants played a crucial role in the Manhattan Project. U.S. universities and others found ways around quotas in the Immigration Act of 1924 after fascist governments threatened many brilliant individuals in Europe. Immigrants Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard signed a letter that Russian-born economist Alexander Sachs used to convince President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to start the Manhattan Project. Breakthroughs by Niels Bohr, born in Denmark, and Enrico Fermi, born in Italy, were crucial in developing the atomic bomb. Immigrant and U.S.-born scientists working together turned theory into reality in the race to build the bomb before Nazi Germany.

The favorable immigration policy views of Donald Trump toward international students are missing from the White House science report. On June 19, 2024, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump taped a podcast interview with venture capitalists on All-In . Trump said, “What I want to do and what I will do is you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country.” Trump promised to address the issue on “day one.”