State and federal lawmakers are setting new rules for how U.S. colleges and universities work with foreign scientists, students, and institutions

Since 2018, Congress and 23 states have introduced 158 bills that would restrict international scientific and academic engagement at U.S. colleges and universities. 24 have become law: 16 in 7 states and 8 in Congress. Activity peaked in 2025, with 46 bills introduced and 7 enacted. In 2026, lawmakers in 14 states took up new bills, 5 of them for the first time.

These policies limit how colleges and universities collaborate with foreign institutions, enroll foreign students, and hire foreign researchers and faculty. Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas have passed such laws, and Louisiana significantly expanded its law this year. Federal agencies have added their own limits through executive orders, rules, and conditions on research funding. In 2026, they proposed rules that would bar federal funds for many international collaborations and limit how long foreign students may study in U.S. programs.

Many of these policies name China directly or rely on federally defined lists that include it, such as “Foreign Adversaries.” As a result, they apply most directly to students and researchers who hold Chinese citizenship or have ties to China. Chinese American students, scholars, and faculty can also face added scrutiny, whatever their citizenship.

Policymakers that introduce these efforts maintain that they are needed to protect U.S. research from theft by foreign governments. Researchers have studied their effects on scientific output, on where scientists and students choose to work and study, and on the economy. One study estimates that proposed federal changes to student visas and work authorization could reduce international enrollment by about a third (Clemens et al. 2025).

Committee of 100 built this tracker so that policymakers, researchers, university leaders, and the Chinese American community can see in one place what these policies say, where they apply, and how they are changing. The tracker:

• Identifies new bills, laws, and executive actions at the state and federal levels, shown on the interactive map below.
• Classifies each policy by what it restricts, such as research partnerships, student enrollment, or faculty hiring.
• Follows each policy’s status as it moves from proposal to law to implementation.

Below the map, a summary of trends highlights what is new in 2026, and a research summary describes what studies have found about the effects of restricting international engagement and of keeping it open.

Interactive policy map

The map has two tabs. Policies in place shows laws and executive actions now in effect, with states shaded by how many types of restriction they have adopted. Legislative activity shows bills that are pending or have passed into law. Use the buttons above each map to filter, and hover over a button to see what it covers. Click a state, or “US” for federal policy, to read a summary.

The federal policies shown focus on those adopted since 2018. Bills that failed are not shown on the map, but they are counted in the figures below.

The trend since 2018, and what’s new in 2026

• 158 bills in 23 states and Congress. Congress alone introduced 85.
• 24 laws. 16 were passed in 7 states: Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. Most of the 8 federal laws were provisions attached to must-pass defense, intelligence, and spending bills, rather than stand-alone legislation.
• A record in 2025. Lawmakers introduced 46 bills and enacted 7, more than in any other year: three in Arkansas, two in Texas, one in Ohio, and the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
• Disclosure laws are spreading too. 13 states and Congress have introduced 55 bills, and passed 9 in 6 states, that add reporting requirements without directly limiting research relationships. These can still chill research: the Justice Department’s China Initiative, which centered on disclosure cases, was followed by lower research output and departures of China-born scientists (Jia et al. 2024; Xie et al. 2023).

New in 2026

At the federal level:

• The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed a rule, 2 C.F.R. § 200.220, that would bar federal grants from supporting any international collaboration with Foreign Adversaries, Countries of Particular Concern, and other sanctioned countries. A statutory restriction currently blocks the rule until December 11.
• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a final rule that would cap international students’ stay at four years, replacing the current open-ended “duration of status.” Researchers estimate that this change, combined with ending Optional Practical Training (OPT) and reprioritizing H-1B visas, could cut international enrollment by a third and reduce national GDP by $140 billion to $481 billion a year (Clemens, Neufeld, and Nice 2025). A court has preliminarily blocked the rule.
• The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that, starting in fiscal year 2027, its funds may not support collaborations with entities on U.S. restricted-party lists, and researchers it funds may not hold positions with them.
• The Department of Defense (DoD) directed 30 universities to cut research and financial ties with listed foreign institutions or risk losing DoD funding.

In the states:

• Louisiana passed Act 505, creating a state Higher Education Research Security Council with the power to review and veto public and private universities’ partnerships, exchange programs, and funding agreements with Foreign Adversaries. Louisiana now has five of the six restriction types tracked here, more than any other state.
• Florida closed the Florida-China Institute and barred its remaining international linkage institutes from any dealings with Foreign Countries of Concern.
• Iowa’s governor ordered a review of all gifts, contracts, and agreements between the state’s public universities and Chinese institutions.
• Lawmakers in 14 states considered new restriction bills, including Arizona, Georgia, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and South Carolina for the first time. Most state legislatures have adjourned for the year; Congress has 26 restriction bills pending.

What the research shows

These policies are one part of a broader set of limits on research and academic freedom in the U.S. (Fernandez and Hutchens 2025). Their costs are well documented. Their security benefits are not: “while the economic and health returns to science are increasingly well measured, the national security consequences of scientific openness or restriction remain less well understood” (Ganguli and MacGarvie 2026, 23).

Restrictions slow American science

• When the U.S. sharply cut immigration in the 1920s, invention fell in the fields and places that had relied on immigrant scientists, including among U.S.-born scientists (Moser and San 2020; Doran and Yoon 2018).
• After federal investigations of researchers with ties to China, scientists who collaborated with China published less, and U.S.–China research collaboration declined (Jia et al. 2024; Flynn et al. 2024).
• Sanctions that limit cross-border collaboration reduce joint innovation with the countries affected (Milani and Pham 2025).

Restrictions push talent elsewhere

• In a 2023 survey, 61% of 1,304 Chinese American faculty said they had thought about leaving the U.S. (Xie et al. 2023).
• In a March 2025 Nature poll of more than 1,600 U.S.-based researchers, roughly 75% said they were considering leaving, mostly for Europe and Canada (Witze 2025).
• Other countries are recruiting them. Canada has hired 48 senior academics from U.S. universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Berkeley (Gridneff and Jack 2026). France’s Safe Place for Science program drew 600 applicants from U.S. institutions, and 31 American researchers began work in France in 2026 (“First International Researchers Hosted at Aix-Marseille University” 2026).
• Surveys of physicists find that research security policies discourage international scientists from coming to or staying in the U.S. (“Research Security Policies and Their Impacts: Key Results of APS Member Survey” 2021), and stricter immigration policies steer international students toward other countries (Ganguli and MacGarvie 2024).

Restrictions hurt American students and workers

• International graduate students’ tuition helps fund U.S. programs. When more international students enroll, more domestic students enroll too, not fewer (Shih 2017).
• Limiting international students’ stay and work options could cost the U.S. economy $140 billion to $481 billion a year (Clemens, Neufeld, and Nice 2025).

Openness pays off

• A 10% increase in international graduate students is associated with about 5% more patent applications (Chellaraj, Maskus, and Mattoo 2008).
• Increases in H-1B visas for skilled workers raised invention by immigrant scientists and engineers without crowding out U.S.-born inventors (Kerr and Lincoln 2010).
• More foreign master’s students in an area leads to more start-ups (Beine, Peri, and Raux 2024).
• Foreign STEM workers raise wages for U.S.-born workers, especially those with college degrees (Peri, Shih, and Sparber 2015).

If you have a comment or know of new bills or policies that have recently been proposed, please email Committee of 100 Research Lead, Sam Collitt, at scollitt@Committee100.org.

Reference list

Beine, Michel, Giovanni Peri, and Morgan Raux. 2024. “The Contribution of Foreign Master’s Students to US Start-Ups.” https://doi.org/10.3386/w33314.

Chellaraj, Gnanaraj, Keith E. Maskus, and Aaditya Mattoo. 2008. “The Contribution of International Graduate Students to US Innovation.” Review of International Economics 16 (3): 444–62. https://ideas.repec.org//a/bla/reviec/v16y2008i3p444-462.html.

Clemens, Michael A, Jeremy Neufeld, and Amy M Nice. 2025. “Brain Freeze: How International Student Exclusion Will Shape the STEM Workforce and Economic Growth in the United States.”

Doran, Kirk, and Chungeun Yoon. 2018. “Immigration and Invention: Evidence from the Quota Acts.”

Fernandez, Frank, and Neal Hutchens. 2025. “Restrictions on US Academic Freedom Affect Science Everywhere.” Nature Human Behaviour 9 (7): 1303–4. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02248-9.

“First International Researchers Hosted at Aix-Marseille University.” 2026. https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/en/first-international-researchers-hosted-aix-marseille-university-100490.

Flynn, Robert, Britta Glennon, Raviv Murciano-Goroff, and Jiusi Xiao. 2024. “Building a Wall Around Science: The Effect of u.s.-China Tensions on International Scientific Research.” https://doi.org/10.3386/w32622.

Ganguli, Ina, and Megan MacGarvie. 2024. “International Students’ Migration: Immigration Policy and Implications for Innovation.” Forthcoming Chapter in Volume.

———. 2026. “Science Without Borders? Waxing and Waning Integration in Global Scientific Research and Innovation.” NBER Chapters.

Gridneff, Ilya, and Andrew Jack. 2026. “Canada Poaches 48 Top US-Based Academics.” Financial Times, August. https://www.ft.com/content/8cc488a5-54c2-41f9-8b87-327ff591be6a?syn-25a6b1a6=1.

Jia, Ruixue, Margaret E. Roberts, Ye Wang, and Eddie Yang. 2024. “The Impact of USchina Tensions on US Science: Evidence from the NIH Investigations.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 121 (19): e2301436121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301436121.

Kerr, William R, and William F Lincoln. 2010. “THE SUPPLY SIDE OF INNOVATION: H-1B VISA REFORMS AND US ETHNIC INVENTION.”

Milani, Sahar, and Linh Pham. 2025. “Sanctions and Global Collaboration in Innovative Activities.” The World Economy 48 (4): 690–724. https://ideas.repec.org//a/bla/worlde/v48y2025i4p690-724.html.

Moser, Petra, and Shmuel San. 2020. “Immigration, Science, and Invention. Lessons from the Quota Acts.” https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3558718.

Peri, Giovanni, Kevin Shih, and Chad Sparber. 2015. “STEM Workers, H-1B Visas, and Productivity in US Cities.” Journal of Labor Economics. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/679061.

“Research Security Policies and Their Impacts: Key Results of APS Member Survey.” 2021. https://www.aps.org/publications/reports/research-security-policies-survey.

Shih, Kevin. 2017. “Do International Students Crowd-Out or Cross-Subsidize Americans in Higher Education?” Journal of Public Economics 156 (December): 170–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.10.003.

Witze, Alexandra. 2025. “75.” Nature 640 (8058): 298–99. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00938-y.

Xie, Yu, Xihong Lin, Ju Li, Qian He, and Junming Huang. 2023. “Caught in the Crossfire: Fears of Chineseamerican Scientists.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120 (27): e2216248120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2216248120.