True, not much data yet, but a cery real day to day factor for conference organizers. We have had two Canadians skip a US conference last month due to the dramatical worse general climate. Zoom instead. This is NOT just about immigration and passport control. It is the new ugly American zeitgeist that changes enthusiasm.
We will probably be skipping the US for two international conferences I have helped organize. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, Halifax are all great alternatives for larger meetings from 2027 ti 20??.
I'm a Canadian who moved to the SF bay area after graduating. A lot of my smartest friends who came with me at the same time are actively taking steps to move back due to the political environment.
I was travelling to the US a few times during previous administration and each time somebody from the team was taken into little dark room for questioning, I was not travelling to the US much before so I was of opinion the way how US border treats travellers was weird to say the least, at least compared to other countries I was travelling to. Sometimes it was worse depending on particular border agent. Interestingly I travelled recently during new administration and did not notice much of a change.
It’s fascinating that people still see these things as new or unique to our current administration. This has been an issue for decades that were often ignored or minimized because it only affected smaller more marginalized groups of people. For example conferences involving HIV/AIDS had to contend with these issues for decades due to the blanket ban on HIV+ individuals from entering the country, even for a scientific conference. Often the conferences would continue leading to schisms in the communities and competing conferences that would ultimately disagree on fundamental principles in science and policy.
This is bound to happen for a lot of other events besides scientific conferences. I know of a guy that wouldn't go to a retrogaming convention for fears of being detained at the border.
Attending US conferences was always more a hassle than most other places.
The 'interrogation' before even boarding the flight was just ridiculous. And the process repeated after landing. Jeez.
The scientific community inherently has their eyes wide open to seeing reality as it is, and the assessment that the US is a hostile place to the reality-based community is a no-brainer.
I was born in the Midwest, have lived my entire adult life in SF, and recently was relieved to get my permanent residency in Canada - moving to Vancouver, BC soon. My co-founder (who is Canadian but has lived in California for 25 years) and I know we won’t be able to attract world-class talent to a country that is trying to go back in time to pre-Enlightenment era.
CIO of $20B/year ARR company: “I was going to send my kid to the US for college. Now? Never in a million years. I’m not even going to go to the US!”
Well done everyone. Well done.
For those without a choice, no threat of punishment/deportation will deter them.
For those with a choice? Arguably the people a country would want to visit/do business with/etc?
The choice is clear: the US is hostile and to be avoided.
In 2015 a PhD scholar attending a security conference was sent back citing national security concerns. This was absurd as she was an Indian, studying in Montreal and has no past involvement in any untoward thing.
In 2017, a friend doing his PhD in artifical intelligence in Germany was made to undergo a thorough interview at the border to determine if he is a threat on account of his work. Again, this was absurd to say the least.
In this March, my SO (French) chose to not attend a tier 1 conference in AI where she was going to present her work. She, having the brains for both of us, was prescient enough to cancel her trip in Feb-March, a bit before the current border policies came into full force and europeans were detained.
I have never gone, nor will I ever go to the United States. Not for scientific purposes or leisure. For over a decade I have been voicing concerns about hosting conferences in a country which is inaccessible or hostile to a vast section of the scientific community. I am glad to see this shift.
I am going to the Defcon CTF Finals at the Defcon conference this year. Coming from Europe, I know of multiple people who will participate remotely because of the political climate. I would have to lie if I said that I didn't think about skipping the USA either. In the cybersecurity space especially things have always been difficult.
This, Harvard, WHO, NIH, and NSF changes create that sucking sound you hear, a brain drain, and people deciding not to go to the US or to leave. Such myopic stupidity in the White House weakening America's power and reputation.
Isn't there a history of security researchers and open source programmers being detained or threatened when visiting the US? So the same thing is being done to the US's domestic researchers as well now?
I ve heard about these problems for many years. In particular, many indian phd students were reluctant to travel to European conferences for fear that there might be complications when returning back to America. The unreliable current administration must have turbocharged these fears
Perfectly reasonable. Nobody wants to get arrested by border agents on an ego trip.
I wish more computer security conferences go to Canada (Montreal if possible) which is cheaper (for me). We do have Recon but that's it.
The one science not rejected by the current US administration is Ballistics. The problem is that China can probably do it better than America. (I do realize that Nature does not have a specialty topic journal on ballistics and weapons.)
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This article seems like political flamebait.
Most scientists are rational people. If they obey US immigration rules, they SHOULD never have a problem. There have recently been a few horrifying stories where this wasn't the case, but those are the exception and not the rule.
Can't read the whole thing because paywall.
I thought nature was about publishing research. This reads like a political opinion piece but is published as "news"?
The author has other similar articles like these about the "US brain drain":
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01540-y
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01489-y
What would help me get an accurate picture is how many conferences are typically held per month in the US and how has that number changed but instead we get fluff like:
"Some meetings have been put on hold" - which meetings?
"Several academic and scientific conferences in the United States have been postponed, cancelled or moved elsewhere" - Which conferences, what % of the total? more specifics?
"Organizers of these meetings say that tougher rules around visas and border control — alongside other policies introduced by US President Donald Trump’s administration — are discouraging international scholars from attending events on US soil. In response, they are moving the conferences to countries such as Canada, in a bid to boost attendance." - Which organizers?
EDIT: I found this resource which would be interesting to examine for trends: https://conferenceindex.org/conferences/science
EDIT2: there are some specific anecdotal examples towards the bottom of the paywalled article. This is still not meeting what I would consider accurate non-opinionated reporting.
The left has a serious misinformation issue nobody is tackling. Just yesterday I was in a coffee shop and the guy next to me was saying Ukraine had to beg Starlink for service, when in reality Starlink gave them 100 million in free service.
The immigration crackdown is exclusively for illegal immigrants, in particular illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes. Unless your conference is for illegal MS13 gang members you have nothing to worry about.
There seems to be more fear mongering than reality here. Why would a scientist coming to the US for a conference be picked up and sent to El Salvador (or some such)? Do they really believe these things are happening to everyone? Are they spending too much time on Reddit instead of doing research?
This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Yes, nothing to do with the absurd costs of arranging such events in the US, let's not beat on a different drum rather than try to bring down total costs.
It's already half way around the world for most and it's absurd to the rest of the world to pay $200 for a meal which can be beaten by most of the developed world...
But no, clearly tsa border control or political wind of the week...
Years ago, I would have found this deeply dismaying. Today, I still see it as a negative development, but far less so, because my regard for the sciences has declined with the growing ideological capture of many disciplines. It’s become typical for political narratives to take center stage at scientific conferences. For example:
e.g. https://healthjournalism.internews.org/article/decolonizing-...
https://archive.ph/iYdBT