It is a challenging time for international scientists who want to visit the USA.
Wait times for visas have increased dramatically since 2024. Many visa requests by scientists are denied for unexplained reasons. And international scientists who do manage to make it to the USA for a meeting are sometimes detained and grilled by immigration officials.
Unsurprisingly, meeting attendance by international scientists in the USA has dropped precipitiously in the past 18 months. This is unfortunate because no country has a monopoly on brilliant insights. Scientific meetings are where ideas collide and new collaborations are born, and all of us are better off when the best scientists in the world are allowed to come together to devise new cures for disease.
The ASPET Annual Meeting will be held from May 17–20 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Given the proximity of Minneapolis to Canada, we began discussions a couple of years ago with the Canadian Society of Pharmacology & Therapeutics (CSPT) about making one day of this meeting a special joint event between ASPET and CSPT.
However, when the new administration took office in the USA in January 2025 and began putting up barriers for scientists to enter the USA, the plans for a joint American and Canadian meeting fell apart. The ASPET meeting in Minneapolis next month will still be sensational, of course, but it would have been even a little more extra-special if we had been able to organize the joint session with our Canadian colleagues, as originally conceived.
All countries need to regulate immigration, but ideally they should be able to find ways of doing so without scientists getting caught in the crossfire. The current restrictions in the USA are hurting American scientists and many American companies just as much as they are hurting international scientists. Hopefully, the near future will bring more sensible rules for international scientists who want to bring their talents to the USA to attend a meeting or pursue a research fellowship.
Sincerely,
Randy Hall, PhD
President, ASPET
