As tensions with China rise, scientists at America’s leading universities complain of stalled research after crackdown at airports
Stopped at the border, interrogated on national security grounds, laptops and mobile phones checked, held for several hours, plans for future research shattered. ⠀
Earlier this month the Chinese embassy in Washington said more than 70 students “with legal and valid materials” had been deported from the US since July 2021, with more than 10 cases since November 2023. The embassy said it had complained to the US authorities about each case. ⠀
“The impact is huge,” says Qin Yan, a professor of pathology at Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut, who says that he is aware of more than a dozen Chinese students from Yale and other universities who have been rejected by the US in recent months, despite holding valid visas. Experiments have stalled, and there is a “chilling effect” for the next generation of Chinese scientists. ⠀
The refusals appear to be linked to a 2020 US rule that barred Chinese postgraduate students with links to China’s “military-civil fusion strategy”, which aims to leverage civilian infrastructure to support military development. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute thinktank estimates that 95 civilian universities in China have links to the defence sector.
Nearly 2,000 visas applications were rejected on that basis in 2021. But now people who pass the security checks necessary to be granted a visa by the State Department are being turned away at the border by CBP, a different branch of government.
“It is very hard for a CBP officer to really evaluate the risk of espionage,” said Dan Berger, an immigration lawyer in Massachusetts, who represents a graduate student at Yale who, midway through her PhD, was sent back from Washington’s Dulles airport in December, and banned from re-entering the US for five years. ⠀
Academics say that scrutiny has widened to different fields – particularly medical sciences – with the reasons for the refusals not made clear.
Just comical amounts of racism. I guess it’s only fitting that the US chase the braindrain it relies on to drive any productive sectors it hasn’t outsourced back to their home countries as it spirals into imperial decline.
racist shithole country
The US shooting itself in the foot by making the neocolonialist brain drain strategy fall apart because they’re too racist and paranoid is somewhat funny. Shitty for these people though.
Yeah, the silver lining here is that US is becoming toxic to foreign students and people are waking up to the fact that moving to US sucks.
Yeah I mean, pay your graduate students about twice as much and make them only work 40 hours a week. Then you won’t have to import labor from outside the county.
Turns out everything the US says about its rivals is projection, who could’ve guessed?
X Edward Guo, a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University, said that part of the problem is that, unlike in the US, military research does sometimes take place on university campuses. “It’s not black and white … there are medical universities that also do military. But 99% of those professors are doing biomedical research and have nothing to do with the military.”.
Us University’s don’t do military research
Yes they do ???
Military research requires clearance which foreign nationals can’t get anyway.
That was the part that confused me too.
Probably even happens more often in US universities than Chinese ones.
Same shit different era. Always gotta be persecuting somebody.
Also when Silicon Valley copies and steals they get praised as revolutionary innovators.
The Silicon Valley thieves are just copying and stealing from over a century of US industrial strategy.
This will backfire independently of the political or security justifications. Many Chinese scientists were put under surveillance, stripped off their academic positions and faced deportation during Red Scare, and this directly contributed to China’s nuclear and space program.
Pathetic
I foremost hope that the United States can regain a shred of its diginity and stop treating every foreigner like a criminal, stop funding a genocide, stop killing its own population with guns, have a decent social services program, etc. This is obviously a fantasy, so I secondarily hope these researchers can go back to China and do good work, where they won’t be treated as second-tier human beings.
snk typical Chinese tyranic- … what do you mean it’s America doing it??
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute thinktank estimates that 95 civilian universities in China have links to the defence sector.
Oh, the think tank with the guy who gets satellite images of schools and says that it’s definitely a Uighur concentration camp, the one funded by the military.
Not surprising when you look at all the anti-China stuff coming out of mainstream liberal orgs and communities.
Biden doing the Trump thing. Recently came up with genius tarifs for Aluminium as well.
pro china, anti us stuff coming from the guardian??
Or guardian jus telling us wass happening? Do you long to be the opposite side of the same coin?
thats a stretch!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Stopped at the border, interrogated on national security grounds, laptops and mobile phones checked, held for several hours, plans for future research shattered.
The exact number of incidents is difficult to verify, as the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency does not provide detailed statistics about refusals at airports.
But the personal accounts speak to a broader concern that people-to-people exchanges between the world’s two biggest economies and scientific leaders are straining.
But now people who pass the security checks necessary to be granted a visa by the State Department are being turned away at the border by CBP, a different branch of government.
“It is very hard for a CBP officer to really evaluate the risk of espionage,” said Dan Berger, an immigration lawyer in Massachusetts, who represents a graduate student at Yale who, midway through her PhD, was sent back from Washington’s Dulles airport in December, and banned from re-entering the US for five years.
But following years of scrutiny from the Department of Justice investigation into funding links to China, and a rise in anti-Asian sentiment during the pandemic, ethnically Chinese scientists say the atmosphere is becoming increasingly hostile.
The original article contains 865 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
