US Urged to Step-Up Efforts to Attract and Retain STEM Talent

A new report from the National Academies urges the U.S. to adopt a “whole of government strategy” to recruit and retain foreign-born science, technology, and engineering talent, or face the U.S. losing its position as a global leader in STEM.

The committee-authored report, which was sponsored by the Department of Defense, compared U.S. and international strategies for attracting foreign-born STEM talent, including reviewing programs in the European Union and Five Eyes countries as well as countries of concern such as China, Russia, and Iran.

Though the U.S. has historically been a magnet for international talent, the report suggests this position has slipped in recent years due to increasing international competition, complex immigration processes, and the perception that the U.S. is unwelcoming to immigrant workers. Effective talent programs in other countries offer easily navigable pathways for individuals and their families to stay in the country, personal remuneration, and access to capital and research resources, the report said.

“The U.S. is not in the same place today as it was in 2018 or even in 2022 with respect to recruiting and retaining foreign STEM talent,” said Sarah Rovito, study director and National Academies program officer, during a webinar sharing the report’s findings. “The market for highly skilled STEM talent is hot, and the U.S. cannot rest on its laurels and assume that it will remain the destination of choice for the best and brightest international talent,” Rovito said.

In addition to doing more to welcome international STEM talent to the U.S., the report said the U.S. must do more to nurture domestic STEM talent, noting that American-born scientists are a “critical component” of the national security innovation base. To stir domestic interest in science, the report repeats a call that National Science Board leaders have made previously for Congress to pass legislation modeled on the National Defense Education Act of 1958.

“About half of the STEM workers holding advanced degrees in the industrial defense base are foreign-born,” said Mark Barteau, committee chair and professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University, during the webinar. “We would certainly like to increase, and need to increase, the supply of domestic STEM talent,” continued Barteau, but he cautioned that it could take a “generation or so” to develop sufficient STEM talent.

Other key recommendations in the report include streamlining immigration processes to make it easier for foreign-born scientists and students to stay in the U.S. long-term. The report recommends that Congress ask government agencies to identify critical STEM areas and authorize additional green cards for foreign-born experts working in those areas. Congress should also create a new category for permanent residents that is not subject to any per-country caps and explicitly includes international STEM graduates of U.S. institutions, the report suggests. Additionally, the federal government should fund a public-facing dashboard to collect and monitor immigration metrics related to international students and professionals in STEM, including the characteristics of people who have been denied F-1 student or J-1 research scholar visas.

The importance of making international researchers feel welcome in the U.S. and the “chilling effect” of the Department of Justice’s controversial China Initiative were recurring themes in both the National Academies report and the accompanying webinar event, with the report recommending that “all efforts should be taken to ensure that programs and policies intended to protect critical research from malign foreign influence do not target or inadvertently discriminate against people on the basis of national origin or ethnicity.”