To the editor:

In the last 85 years the United States has encouraged science education and has attracted the best minds in the world, allowing Americans to harness nuclear energy, go to the moon, invent the internet, develop the polio and other vaccines, and produce many more breakthroughs. Americans have received about 40% of the Nobel prizes.

Immigrants to America have played a large part in our success. We have benefited from a brain gain by attracting the best and brightest from around the world who came to America for a better life. Nuclear energy would not have been developed without input from Albert Einstein. Werner von Braun helped the U.S. outpace the USSR in the space race. The oral polio vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin. About 35% of American Nobel Prizes went to immigrants.

The Trump administration has been defunding science research, firing scientists, and deporting international students studying at U.S. universities. Taking advantage of Trump’s short sightedness, foreign countries are busy recruiting the best and brightest from the U.S. and around the world. The E.U. has allocated more than half a billion dollars to attract American scientists to Europe. An Australian institute declared that for Australia, “this is a once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity.” Applications of American scientists to work abroad have increased dramatically. Fewer foreign scientists are applying to work in the U.S. The brain gain has become a brain drain.

We may not feel the full effects of Trump’s folly for years as the rest of the world overtakes us. The president of the National Academy of Sciences fears that in the “… race for being the science powerhouse [we may] never fully recover.” If the center of science moves abroad, the next Sergey Brin (Google) or Elon Musk (Space-X) (both immigrants) may choose to work abroad. If we allow Trump to prevail, we can expect that the next big tech companies which challenge Google and Space-X will be founded in China or Europe rather than in the U.S. We may become a follower rather than the leader in science and technology.

Sherwin Skar

Marshall