Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump's stance on immigration is giving researchers in the US pause, Nature News reports.
Trump has championed the building of a wall on the southern border of the US — and charging Mexico for its construction — and has called for a ban on Muslim immigrants into the country, with the exception of some wealthy immigrants. While Trump has advocated for allowing skilled workers into the country, he has been critical of the H-1B visa program for highly skilled workers, saying that it is abused and should be limited.
This anti-immigrant stance may hurt research in the US, Nature News writes, as about 5 percent of students in the US come from other countries.
Razi Nalim, an engineer at Indiana University-Purdue University, was in India to recruit students to his university's program and he tells Nature News that when he was asked whether he would still encourage foreign-born, Muslim students to study in the US, he paused. "I would still say the opportunity for doing cutting-edge science here is unmatched," says Nalim. "Where I think I would caution people to think more carefully is longer term: where would they want to live and raise a family? That's a harder question to answer."