The Fallacy of US Emigration
Has anyone actually left?
Given the political climate in the United States and some high-profile funding cuts, the question was put forth: who has actually left the US because of this? The narrative is negative, of course, but what’s the reality?
I decided to look for sources. Generalizations, speculations, proposals, and anecdotes aside, what is actually documented? So, I searched, and I searched, and I searched some more, and what you see here is the extent of what I can provide links to.
Funding Cuts
NSF: “the final spending legislation for fiscal year 2025 provided NSF with the same topline budget as the prior fiscal year”
DoE: “providing annual appropriations for FY2025 at the FY2024 level”
NIST: “providing annual appropriations for FY2025 at the FY2024 level”
There have been no DOGE cuts to NSF, DoE, or NIST quantum funding.
The US Congress has not passed 2026 appropriations, so nothing has been cut.
DoD: An unspecified grant for quantum nanophotonics was terminated.
In America, some like to argue that keeping funding levels the same is an effective cut due to inflation. It’s both true that FY2024 funding levels for the NSF, DoE, and NIST carried over uncut to FY2025, and there is inflation. Whatever your politics, you’re technically correct.
Funding Increases
DARPA and the State of New Mexico may match up to $120 million total over four years for the Quantum Frontier Project.
The New Mexico Economic Development Department awarded a $25 million grant to build a quantum campus in Albuquerque.
The State of Maryland advanced $5 million for IonQ’s new headquarters in the University of Maryland, College Park’s Discovery District.
The State of New Mexico will invest $315 million in private companies, fabrication facilities and other infrastructure.
I knew I should’ve taken that left turn at Albuquerque.
Program Contraction
A George Mason University grant cancellation led to the layoffs of 3 postdoctoral researchers studying ways of raising student interest in the quantum workforce.
I have observed the lamentation of funding cuts on social media, and the antisemitic rants they spawn, but I’m not counting social media posts as credible sources. Look at your timelines real quick and back me up on that.
Program Expansion
Florida State University is hiring Quantum Science & Engineering, Assistant/Associate Professor, 9 Month Salaried (Multiple Vacancies).
Penn State’s Eberly College of Science’s Department of Physics hired Thomas Iadecola as an associate professor of physics studying quantum condensed matter.
Princeton University’s Princeton Quantum Initiative and Department of Physics is hiring a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Experimental Quantum Science.
Southern Methodist University’s Lyle School of Engineering’s Computer Science or Electrical & Computer Engineering Departments is hiring a Walden & Paula Rhines Endowed Quantum Informatics Associate/Full Professor.
The University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Physics and Astronomy is hiring an Assistant Professor in Quantum Physics Experiment.
Let the record show that I was able to document a net expansion.
Emigration
I cannot find any specific individuals who have emigrated.
This would be easier, of course, if some big-name researcher completely packed up and left the US for good, but I couldn’t find that. I have found anecdotes of non-US institutions luring US-based researchers, as well as US researchers considering leaving, but I cannot find you a link of some non-US institution welcoming someone from the US.
Immigration
A Postdoctoral Research Associate from Iran specializing in quantum computing and materials science received an EB-2 National Interest Waiver.
Despite not being able to document anyone outgoing, I was able to find someone incoming. Technically, that’s a net increase.
Conclusion
In America, politics has two sides: left and right. There are opinionated issues, and you’re entitled to your opinions. For example, you might want more funding for quantum. You’re entitled to that opinion. But then there are factual issues, and we can check those. There will be media that reports the facts with a left bias, others with a right bias, and connoisseurs like me will read both in search for the truth, which can be found somewhere in the middle. And what you see here is the extent of what I can document about one particular issue.
Image generated by an AI model provided by Microsoft Copilot.
I grew up in a country (the UK) where scientists often moved to the US because of better funding. It was not just salaries but better labs, equipment, etc. But I suspect there was also a lot of talk and no action -- We are not all Rosie O'Donell (Sp?)
Moving countries is not an easy thing to do emotionally (I did it, I know) and in the end some people just come back to their countries of birth. I also have friends who swore they would move to new countries the moment they got their professional qualifications or PhDs. They did move, realized they had made a big mistake and came home or went somewhere else, in one case emigrating to a third country (the US).
This was all back in the 1970s, but all current talk about leaving the US is emotional too, just in a different way. It's ideological -- Nature reported recently that only 10 percent of political donations by scientists went to the GOP. Unfortunately, scientists have a habit of assuming that they have insight into everything and that science is more important than anything. This isn't true, of course. So I think a great deal of the emotion/petulance this time in the "I am going to leave" movement "if they don't fund my favorite program" is vulgar hatred of our President.
I was on a call with a very senior administrative guy at a very major American university a month or two ago and he couldn't get over the fact that Congress was going to be cutting funding for his quantum computing programs. He thought that it was just wrong that the new Congress didn't feel bound by the promises of Biden world. He was perhaps forgetting that it's been a long standing principle of American governance that no Congress need feel bound by what a previous one has decided.
Perhaps my Ivy League guy never knew. Which reminds me of what one of my teachers, the great philosopher of science Imre Lakatos once said in a private conversation -- that scientists understand as little about the environment in which science develops as goldfish do about hydrodynamics