专家撰文呼吁拜登：尽快豁免他们 保住美国的科技优势
文章来源: 国际观察
8/31/2021
曾担任美国移民、边界安全和索赔小组委员会移民顾问的诺兰·拉帕波特(Nolan Rappaport)近日在《国会山报》发表文章，呼吁总统拜登重视一个可能被忽略的严重移民问题——豁免科研人员抵美的问题。
文章称，拜登在很大程度上展现了其“遵循科学”的意图，但其在移民政策上的草率决定似乎会使美国的科学水平低下，并为未来几年的竞争力和领导地位带来潜在的严重影响。
超过1000名在全美学术和非学术机构中任职的博士后科研人员3日向政府发布了一封公开信，要求拜登给予他们旅行豁免，因为目前他们很难凭借J-1学生签证或H-1B特殊专业人员签证进入美国。
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对于学术界和企业实验室以外的人来说，博士后是指持有博士学位并从事临时研究和/或学术培训的人。最重要的是，他们是全美科研事业的重要组成部分——从计算机科学到工程领域。
美国政策国家基金会(National Foundation for American Policy)今年8月的一份政策简报显示，这些博士后在完成博士学位后在美国大学协助进行研究，而美国大学中的博士后56%是持有临时工作签证的海外人士。博士后拥有先进的科研经验，成为美国科学研究的重要组成部分。他们“为许多实验室提供了大量劳动力、想法和创意”。此外，绝大多数外国博士后都是从美国以外的大学获得的博士学位，因此这“为美国提供了与全球各大学最近开展的研究建立直接联系的机会。”
文章表示，这听起来似乎不错，但博士后的生活很艰难。至少在未来的几年里，这些人觉得自己的薪资水平低于预期，没有什么工作保障，而且压力很大。然而从经济上讲，博士后是美国科学体系运作方式的关键组成部分。没有他们——其中大多数是外国人——这个体系会开始陷入停滞。
文章指出，拜登曾在1月25日推翻了特朗普曾经的签证限制措施，但J-1学生签证和H-1B特殊专业人员签证不在豁免之列。拜登的做法显然有些匆忙了。他想为入境符合美国利益的外国人提供豁免，却没有考虑到实施的拖延可能损害国家利益。
一些群体，如持有F-1和M-1签证的学生，已获得综合来美旅行豁免(National Interest Exception,NIE)。这意味着当他们在入境口岸申请进入美国时，他们将自动被考虑获得NIE。想必，如果拜登没有这么匆忙的话，他会在公告中提供一个快速批准此类全面豁免请求的程序。
文章最后提到，拜登应该考虑给博士后研究人员和其他合适的群体提供一个完整的NIE。如果他想让美国继续在世界科技舞台上保持竞争力，这是至关重要的。
A serious immigration problem you probably haven’t heard about
BY NOLAN RAPPAPORT
8/31/2021
President Biden has made much of his intent to “follow the science,” but an unintended consequence of what appears to be a hasty decision on immigration policy could render U.S. science subpar, slow and uncompetitive, not only on COVID, but on a host of fronts with potentially serious impacts for U.S. competitiveness and leadership for years to come.
On Aug. 3, more than a thousand foreign postdoctoral research assistants — known as “postdocs” — who are affiliated with academic and non-academic institutions in the United States posted an open letter to the U.S. government asking for an exception to President Biden’s Jan. 25 COVID-19 travel restriction proclamation because it is making it difficult for them to enter the United States with their J-1 student visas or their H-1B Specialty Occupation visas.
For those outside academia and corporate labs, “postdocs” are people who hold a doctoral degree and are engaged in a temporary period of research and/or scholarly training.
More to the point: They are an essential component to the United States’ scientific enterprise — from computer science to engineering.
According to an August 2021 policy brief from the National Foundation for American Policy, postdocs assist in critical research at United States universities after completing their doctorate, and 56 percent of the postdocs at U.S. universities are foreign nationals who work on temporary visas. Postdocs have experience in advanced research, which makes them an important part of scientific research in the United States. They “provide much of the labor, ideas, and innovation in many labs.” Moreover, the vast majority of the foreign postdocs have received their Ph.D.s from universities outside the United States, which “provides the United States with direct connections to research recently performed at universities around the world.”
As nice as that may sound, the life of a postdoc is tough. For a few years, at least, they are expected to work for less than many of their colleagues would be willing to accept — with little job security and lots of stress — in the hope of good things in the future. The postdoc’s low salary — estimated at $52,000 in 2008 and pegged at a median of $47,500 more than 10 years later — is key in grant-funded research. Economically, the postdoc is a key component of how our scientific system works.
Without them — a majority of whom are foreign — the system begins to grind to a halt.
The postdocs who signed the letter to the Biden administration claim that his COVID immigration restrictions aren’t just a problem for postdocs seeking to come to the United States. They’re also a problem for the ones already here: if those postdocs leave the country for any reason, such as to go home for a short visit, they will not be allowed to re-enter the United States when they return unless they have a National Interest Exception (NIE) — and it’s taking up to 60 business days to get one of those exceptions, and most J-1 visa holders are not allowed to leave the country for more than 30 days.
The context
I understand why Biden issued executive orders reversing former President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement and border security measures the day he took the oath of office — He had promised to reverse those measures when he was campaigning for the presidency.
I don’t understand why he reversed Trump’s last COVID-19 proclamation five days later — the action that’s causing the problem for the postdocs.
Trump issued his proclamation initially on January 31, 2020, as the pandemic began: It suspended the entry of immigrants and nonimmigrants who posed a risk of bringing the 2019 Novel Coronavirus into the country. It initially applied to people coming from China; other countries with high rates of infection were added later. A few days before his presidency ended, Trump issued a new proclamation that limited the suspension to aliens who had been in China and Iran. The other countries that had been on his list had agreed to cooperate with a CDC order requiring proof of a negative COVID-19 test before boarding a flight to the United States.
On Jan. 25, 2021, Biden issued his own COVID-19 proclamation that effectively reversed Trump’s — putting back under suspension the countries — primarily in Europe — that Trump had removed and adding a list of exemptions. J-1 student visas and H-1B Specialty Occupation visas were not listed among the exemptions.
It smacks of haste. Was Biden just determined to reverse Trump’s immigration and border security measures, regardless of the consequences?
In his apparent haste, he provided an exception for aliens whose entry would be in the national interest (NIE), but provided no procedure for making that determination quickly when delay could hurt the national interest — such as when the bureaucratic gears to get an NIE turn so slowly a postdoc’s visa expires during the wait.
Postdoc solution
Some groups, such as F-1 and M-1 students have been given a blanket NIE, which means that they automatically are considered for an NIE when they seek admission to the United States at a port of entry.
Presumably, if Biden hadn’t acted so hastily, he would have provided a procedure for quickly granting requests for such blanket exceptions in his proclamation.
It’s not too late to do that now, and in the meantime, he should consider granting a blanket NIE to postdoc researchers and other appropriate groups. If he wants the U.S. to continue competing on the world stage in science and technology, it’s essential.
Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years. Follow his blog at https://nolanrappaport.blogspot.com.