Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal ruthlessly turned on Donald Trump, using the newest Nobel Prize winners to deliver a sharp rebuke to his immigration crackdown.
In a blistering editorial, the Journal’s editorial board linked Trump’s policies to what it called a short-sighted effort to choke off the innovation that keeps the U.S. globally competitive.
The assessment comes ahead of Friday’s Nobel Peace Prize announcement, for which President Donald Trump has campaigned loudly.
“Welcoming immigrants to the U.S. is out of fashion on the political right these days, even for those who enter the U.S. legally,” the board wrote. “That’s short-sighted for America’s future prosperity, as this week’s news about the annual Nobel Prize winners in the sciences shows again.”
Six U.S. residents were among nine Nobel winners in the sciences this year—and half of them were immigrants. Trump, meanwhile, is hoping to be honored with a Nobel Peace Prize on Friday as a result of his peacekeeping efforts.
The paper highlighted French-born Michel Devoret and British-born John Clarke, who shared the physics prize with American John Martinis for research into “quantum mechanical tunnelling.”
Jordanian-born Omar Yaghi, who fled his country as a refugee and learned English at a community college in Troy, New York, shared the chemistry prize for his work developing “metal-organic frameworks.”
“Professor Yaghi’s path speaks to the varieties of the U.S. immigrant experience,” the Journal said. “You never know who or how the poorest refugee or migrant might blossom into a world-class scientist or entrepreneur. This is talent the U.S. needs, and immigration is a force multiplier for American innovation.”
The editorial cited research from the National Foundation for American Policy showing that immigrants account for roughly 40 percent of all U.S.-based Nobel winners in the sciences since 2000—45 percent in physics, 43 percent in chemistry, and 32 percent in medicine.
“Some of our readers will sniff that these are mere anecdotes and say the Trump White House supports legal immigration,” the paper continued. “Sorry, anecdotes matter because the contributions of individuals matter. And the restrictionists in the White House are trying to shrink even legal immigration too.”
The Journal singled out Trump’s push to make H-1B visas prohibitively expensive for smaller companies and his administration’s efforts to reduce foreign student enrollment.
“One inevitable if hard-to-calculate price of the Trump campaigns against immigration and the U.S. academy is that an unknown number of future potential prize winners will choose to study elsewhere, or return home after they have a degree,” it warned.
The rebuke lands awkwardly for Trump, who has openly lobbied for a Nobel Peace Prize of his own and has touted his foreign policy achievements as evidence of his deserving the prize.
As the Journal put it bluntly, “The U.S. will get fewer [Nobel Prizes] in the future if the Trump administration won’t welcome legal immigrants and refugees.”
The White House has been contacted for comment.
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