网易教育讯 多年以来，美国决策者们一直就是否为外国理工类博士毕业生提供绿卡的议题争论不休，无法出台相关政策。鉴于此，密歇根大学（University of Michigan）中国籍细胞生物学家陈晓伟（Xiao-Wei Chen，音译）决定不再等待，返回中国。
绿卡政策停滞
美国因此丢失“尖端人才”？
据《纽约时报》（New York Times）13日报道，陈先生主要从事胆固醇代谢方面的研究，今年这方面的研究帮助他在国立卫生研究院（National Institutes of Health）获得了一份工作。不过陈先生并不准备在美国工作，他决定返回中国，在北京大学（Peking University）进行研究。
“对于像我这样的年轻人，在那里（北京大学）工作可能更有益。”他说。
一般情况下，大多数从顶尖大学毕业的中国博士如果获得美国研究机构的录用通知书，他们还是会选择留在美国，陈先生只代表极少数。
不过，陈先生的情况可能是一个令人警惕的信号：当外国理工类博士能否获得绿卡的问题仍然悬而未决之时，这个问题可能无法解决。对于尖端人才来说，美国政府在对待科学人才的冷漠可能让其它国家的就业机会显得更加诱人。
哈佛大学（Harvard University）研究科学人才全球竞争力的专家迈克尔•泰特尔鲍姆（Michael S. Teitelbaum）表示，学术界都知道，来自中国科研机构的就业机会已越来越具有吸引力。
4月，美国众多主流科研机构的负责人参加了参议院拨款委员会（Senate Appropriations Committee）的听证会，在这次会议上，陈先生决定回中国就业的事件引起了关注。
该事件呼吁联邦政府向科学研究投入更多资金，从而推动经济发展。伊利诺伊州民主党参议员理查德•德宾（Richard J. Durbin）以此感叹美国失去了太多学术成就卓越的亚洲国家学生。 “这是一种浪费。这些人才来到美国，接受训练，然后就离开了。”他评论道。
德宾一直致力于改变这种情况，他推动的议案规定，任何从美国大学毕业并获得工作的理工类博士毕业生均可获得绿卡。该议案获得了奥巴马政府和两党主要议员的支持。
对于德宾提出的议案，国立卫生研究院负责人弗朗西斯•柯林斯（Francis S. Collin）也提出了自己的想法。他向德宾介绍了陈先生的具体情况，比如北京大学向陈先生提供了薪资水平优厚，达到数百万美元。相比美国政府因财政紧张，对科研人才出手“小气”，中国对尖端人才可谓是出手阔绰。
柯林斯说：“签证当然是人才流失的关键因素，能为尖端人才解决这个问题当然是好事。然而，即使这个问题解决了，这些人才在美国医疗领域进行研究时，也会发现自己没有未来。相比来说，这些人才在新加坡、中国、韩国以及巴西可吃香多了，那里的机会更多。”相比10年前，国立卫生研究院的预算减少了25%（该数据已扣除通货膨胀影响）。
加州民主党众议员杰基•斯派尔（Jackie Speier）将此形容为，中国正在吃美国的午餐。
回国是他因
对真正优秀的人才来说签证不是太大问题
事实上，改变绿卡政策可能有助于让学术成就一般的理工类博士毕业生留在美国，但对于成就卓越的人才来说，问题远远不止那么简单。“对于很多真正的优秀人才来说，签证不是太大的问题。”陈先生说。
近年，美国学术界失去两位重量级科学人才——施一公（Shi Yigong）和饶毅（Rao Yi）。施一公原为普林斯顿大学（Princeton University）生物学家，现就职于清华大学。饶毅原为西北大学（Northwestern University）神经生物学家，现就职于北京大学。他们都放弃了美国国籍。
施一公、饶毅和陈先生回中国的决定说明，外国科学家在职业生涯中，恐怕会考虑更多因素。
亚利桑那州立大学（Arizona State University）政治与全球研究教授丹尼斯•西蒙（Denis F. Simon）表示，目前返回母国的顶尖理工类博士毕竟是少数，美国人也不应该将这些人才认为是“失败”或“浪费”的投资。“有意思的问题并不是科学人才的去留问题，而是这些科学人才去哪儿的问题。”他说。
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WASHINGTON — For years, United States policy makers have been debating the idea of granting green cards to foreigners with science doctorates. The cell biologist Xiao-Wei Chen, at the University of Michigan, is no longer waiting for them to decide.
Mr. Chen, whose work on cholesterol metabolism helped him win a job competition this year at the National Institutes of Health, is instead making plans to return home to China and his undergraduate institution, Peking University.
“The opportunities there might be more nourishing for young people like me to develop scientifically,” he said.
Mr. Chen remains in a minority. Most top-ranked Chinese students offered jobs at American institutions after finishing doctorates still choose to stay. “He’s more the exception than the rule,” said Denis F. Simon, a professor of politics and global studies at Arizona State University who specializes in China policy.
Yet Mr. Chen might also be a warning flag: As Congress debates whether to extend green-card privileges to foreign students earning doctorates in the sciences, the question may be growing moot. Top-ranking students are already finding that they can stay if they want — and many do not. The nation’s continuing disinvestment in science is making overseas options appear increasingly attractive.
“Anybody in academe knows,” says Michael S. Teitelbaum, a Harvard University expert in the global competition for scientific talent, “the offers coming from Chinese institutions are getting more and more attractive.”
As the world grows more interconnected, says Mr. Simon, distance from the United States becomes less of an impediment to career success.
Mr. Chen’s case gained attention in April during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing with the heads of the major federal science agencies.
The event was a call for helping the economy by investing more federal money in scientific research. Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, took the opportunity to bemoan the loss of many accomplished Asian students. “What a waste, that we would bring this talent to America, train it, and then invite it to leave,” he commented.
A bill Mr. Durbin has been promoting, backed by the Obama administration and leading lawmakers from both parties, would grant a green card, or permanent legal residency, to any foreigner who earned a doctorate in a science or engineering field at an American university and received a job offer based on it.
The director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis S. Collins, responded to Mr. Durbin by telling him about Mr. Chen and the multimillion-dollar package he was offered by Peking University, and how China’s approach to pursuing research compared with the prolonged period of budgetary stress facing scientists in the United States.
“Certainly the visa situation is a big part of the issue, and it would be great to get that fixed,” Dr. Collins told the senator. “But even if that’s fixed, then people don’t see that there’s a future for them by staying in the American medical system — and it looks much brighter in Singapore or China or South Korea or Brazil — then they’re going to go where the opportunities are.”
Some in Congress are concerned about declining federal support for science — the National Institutes’s budget is about 25 percent smaller than it was 10 years ago, in inflation-adjusted dollars.
“China is about to eat our lunch,” Rep. Jackie Speier, Democrat of California, told a staff briefing last month on Capitol Hill.
Speaking from Ann Arbor, Mich., Mr. Chen reiterated Dr. Collins’s point about economics being more important than visa rules. Even without the green-card legislation, versions of which have been pursued unsuccessfully in Congress for years, Mr. Chen said he had seen that most top-ranked foreign science graduates who really wanted to stay in the United States managed to find a way.
While a green-card bill may help foreign science graduates ranked at middle and lower performance levels, those recognized as star performers are eligible for visas, based on certain high-demand skills. “A visa is definitely not too much of a problem for many good people,” Mr. Chen said.
Two of the most high-profile losses of foreign scientific talent in recent years — Shi Yigong, a Princeton University biology professor who left for Tsinghua University, and Rao Yi, a Northwestern University neurobiologist who decamped to Peking University — even had United States citizenship and gave it up.
Those cases, and that of Mr. Chen, suggest that foreign scientists consider factors more varied than may be assumed in many policy debates.
Mr. Chen earned an undergraduate degree from Peking University in 2002 and went to Michigan, where he earned a doctorate in physiology in 2008. This year he was among a handful of winners chosen from several hundred applicants for the Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigators program at the National Institutes of Health.
But the actual appointment of a Stadtman winner to an N.I.H. division is dependent on annual budget allocations, and Mr. Chen was told that he would probably need to wait another year or more to get a posting. Instead he accepted the offer from Peking University, which included modern lab facilities, a supply of graduate students, and — most important, he says — confidence that his budget would remain robust for many years to come.
Rather than hold out the prospect of a visa that becomes an increasingly less valuable enticement for top foreign scientists, United States policy makers might instead consider reviving federal support for research and making conditions easier for American scientists to collaborate with global partners, said Mr. Simon, of Arizona State.
Still, the relatively few top science graduates who return home to foreign countries should not be regarded by Americans as somehow “lost” or “wasted” investments, he added.
“The interesting question is not whether one stays or goes,” he says, “but what one does wherever they are.”
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