Open the gates from scientists to healthcare workers immigrants are at the centre of battling covid

Open the gates from scientists to healthcare workers immigrants are at the centre of battling covid

Today’s populist and anti-globalist right wing mood targets immigrants. Yet immigrants could be key to saving the world. Although the Covid-19 pandemic has wretchedly underlined that viruses know no national borders, every great success in the fight against it has come because science does not stop at these borders either. Nor do scientists. Particularly in the rich world, from developing therapies and vaccines to dispensing healthcare, immigrants are playing a prominent role. In the US, the National Science Foundation is headed by Indian-American scientist Sethuraman Panchanathan, but the community’s role looks set to grow much more in the incoming administration, with three Indian-Americans featuring in the 13-member Covid task force announced by President-elect Joe Biden.

The immigrant mother of the vice-president elect was a scientist too, specifically a cancer researcher. Indeed a third of the US Nobel prizes in chemistry, medicine and physics have been won by immigrants. The benefits of this collaborative ecosystem go to the entire world. It is a global good. The German company BioNTech whose collaborative vaccine with Pfizer has raised high hopes, was founded by a Turkish immigrant couple – Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci. As MP Johannes Vogel noted, if the far right had its way these two good doctors and their company would never have gotten to succeed in Germany.

The increased healthcare demands of the pandemic have also created a pushback against tough immigration restrictions in various rich countries. From the UK to Australia, there are new pressures to either expedite or liberalise immigration for the healthcare sector. But narrowly utilitarian strategies will do disservice to larger ends. Science progresses best when scientists study and research most freely. Even big money cannot make up for increased restrictions on the experts, their experiments or their students.