American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

I agree with this analysis; it would be hard for American scientists with spouses and children to relocate. However, there’s another thing to consider: the amount of researchers from grad students all the way to tenured professors and senior industry researchers who are not American citizens who moved to America for their careers.

The following is anecdotal and I don’t have any statistics. When I was a PhD student at UC Santa Cruz, roughly half of my classmates were foreigners, many from mainland China and India, but also from Iran, South Korea, Greece, Uruguay, and Mexico, to name a few. My first advisor was a German who became a naturalized American citizen, and while roughly half of my professors were native-born Americans, I also had professors from China, Ireland, Greece, Singapore, and Argentina. During my time in industry in Silicon Valley as a researcher, I’ve worked with many people who grew up abroad and moved to the United States for grad school.

The biggest issue I see with a brain drain in America isn’t necessarily Americans going abroad, since it would be a major sacrifice giving up family and friends to move to a place with an unfamiliar language and culture. The problem I see is when immigrants to America who have already made those sacrifices end up leaving America, either to return to their countries of origin or to different countries. If a significant number of immigrant scientists leave America, this will be a tremendous blow to American science, and this may also be a boon to countries that are willing and able to hire these talented people.

China, for example, has the money to fund science at levels competitive with the United States. I don’t foresee a lot of Americans moving to China, partly due to the language barrier, and also partly due to China’s political system. However, what if Chinese researchers in the United States return to China en masse? This is not good for us, though it would be great for China.

These are scary times in America.

> The biggest issue I see with a brain drain in America isn’t necessarily Americans going abroad, since it would be a major sacrifice giving up family and friends to move to a place with an unfamiliar language and culture

So, all those people you met did exactly this.

> it would be hard for American scientists with spouses and children to relocate.

No harder than it was for any of those other people to relocate to the USA.

I know that Americans like to believe that everyone in the rest of the world really wants to live in the USA, but that's actually not true. There's a certain fascination, for sure, but (and especially recently) the USA is not the shining beacon on the hill that it once was.

> I don’t foresee a lot of Americans moving to China, partly due to the language barrier, and also partly due to China’s political system

I suspect that both these barriers are easily overcome with the simple realisation that the choice is "be a scientist in China, or not at all".

If the USA cuts funding for all science, then all scientists must move abroad. There's no option to stay in the USA and be a scientist, because science in the USA is government funded and the government stopped funding it. If the individual chooses to stay in the USA, then they must also choose to stop being a scientist.

I broadly agree, though I wonder if part of the reason why Americans think that going to other countries might be a very difficult decision is that if they aren't immigrants or children of immigrants, they have a very limited experience of learning a second or third language and adapting culturally.

Learning Spanish in high-school isn't quite the same as learning to function in a new culture and language.

I agree. Even for Americans with experiences learning foreign languages and adapting to different cultures, it is not easy living abroad.

This is anecdotal, but I am currently in Japan as a visiting researcher at a Japanese university during my summer break; I'm a tenure-track computer science instructor at a Silicon Valley community college. This is my 13th time in Japan and my second-longest stay. I love being in Japan and it's a mission of mine to have ties to Japan for the rest of my life.

I'm in my mid-thirties, single with no children, and I'm knowledgeable of Japanese culture (including the work culture; I've interned in Japan for eight months and I've worked for a Silicon Valley branch of a Japanese company for six years) and I have the ability to have basic conversations in Japanese (I'm still studying with an aim for fluency), and so if push came to shove and I found myself with a bleak future in America, I could move to Japan long-term and adapt. In fact, it's a dream of mine to own a home in Japan.

However, it will still be a sacrifice. I would need to find a job either as a researcher or as a software engineer; a pure teaching career at the university level in Japan would be difficult for me until I become fluent in Japanese. Lower salaries plus the weak yen means it will be tough for me to pay off my dollar-denominated debts, including my student loans. In addition, I would like to get married and start a family one day, and while I'm treated well in Japan, I'm concerned about the treatment my children would face here (I'm a black American); it's one thing being a researcher at a Japanese institution, it's another thing being a child, especially a child with African ancestry.

Then again, the situation in America is deteriorating, with academia and science being under attack by our administration with breathtaking speed, and with anti-minority racism and xenophobia becoming normalized again in everyday society. Even if the Democrats win the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election, we still have a very large voter base who is completely on-board with MAGA. Barring a situation that leads to the complete repudiation of MAGA by the American public as a whole, MAGA is going to remain a force in politics for decades to come, which will be my entire working career, and there will probably be future MAGA presidents in the 2030s and 2040s. The idea of a liberal democratic republic with liberal institutions that respect diversity and have an international view is under attack in America, and if MAGA succeeds, life will be more difficult for academics and minorities in America. I just don't know if there are any countries out there that resemble this old vision of America; perhaps Canada and Australia are the closest things.

Job-wise, I'm at a community college where we are not as reliant on federal funding compared to research universities, but I'm monitoring the situation carefully, and I need to be prepared for a situation where circumstances force me into alternative employment, including moving abroad.

Well, statistically speaking, Americans are more likely to be children or grandchildren of immigrants than, say, Europeans.

The language thing is real, and shared with other anglophone countries. Though there is an upside; almost everyone else speaks English, so it's likely that when you get to your new home you'll be able to be understood while you learn their language.

I spent a few years in Berlin, and worked there for two different German companies while struggling to learn the language. Everyone smoothly switched to English, sometimes mid-sentence, when I entered the chat. A German moving to the USA (or any anglophone country) would not have this experience and would have to get fluent in English really quickly.

Japan is definitely one of those countries where integrating is hard, I've heard. Germany was a lot easier.

That's a very good point I hadn't considered!

I really appreciate you going into so much detail about your considerations, as Japan is one of the places I'm seriously considering for research after my postdoc. I have some basic Japanese down and am aiming to build up more in the time I have (regardless of if I actually end up going, I spend so much time engaging with anime, japanese music, japanese social media etc, that it would be disrespectful to not put some effort into properly learning the language).

My thoughts are very similar regarding the future of things in the US. Though I feel that the situation may be a bit more bleak, because even if democrats win, I don't really see things changing. They have a penchant for talking a lot and doing very little. As you said, barring a complete repudiation of MAGA, it's going to remain awful for quite a while.