For decades the United States has attracted some of the world’s best research minds. Now, many worry that restrictive immigration policies will block new talent from entering the country, reports William J. Broad of The New York Times.

Ahead of the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, Broad interviews the three U.S.-based, foreign-born Nobel winners this year.

One, Omar Yaghi, was born into a family of Palestinian refugees in Jordan and came to the U.S. as a teenager to study chemistry. He’s now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and called the restrictions "regrettable."

"We’ve learned over and over in human civilization that scholars can move across borders," Yaghi said. "This is how knowledge spread and how vast regions of the world lifted themselves out of poverty."

Lisa Gilman, director of George Mason University’s Institute for Immigration Research, said of current policies, "If this continues, we’re going to lose our standing as the world leader in science and innovation."

Meanwhile, the Canadian government is laying out a plan to attract new talent, even offering U.S. H-1B holders an "accelerated pathway," reports Matina Stevis-Gridneff, also of The New York Times.

"As other countries constrain academic freedoms and undermine cutting-edge research, Canada is investing, and doubling down, on science," Mélanie Joly, Canada’s Industry minister, said in a statement.

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s VP of Strategic Communications, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Marcela Aguirre, Masooma Amin, Jillian Clark and Clara Villatoro. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].

GREEN CARDS INTERRUPTED — Minutes before his green card interview, a Utah father married to a U.S. citizen was arrested and detained by immigration authorities and sent to Arizona, reports Shelby Lofton of KSL TV. Jair Celis’s lawyer said Celis came to the country legally and has no criminal record. The detention sparked a protest, as Caroleina Hassett of Fox 13 reports. Among similar cases, Ukrainian refugee and green card applicant Viktoriia Bulavina was detained last week, reports Jeanette Quezada of NBC San Diego.

‘STATUS: VENEZUELAN’ — In a new ProPublica documentary, filmmaker and reporter Mauricio Rodríguez Pons follows a Venezuelan family who entered the United States legally and was then stripped of status by the administration. "It’s as if you’re standing on a rug that’s pulled from under you," said Yineska, whose family lived here for two years legally before the policy change.

Here are more stories on personal impacts: 

SOCIAL MEDIA DATA — The United States could begin requiring visitors from countries on the visa waivers list to provide up to five years of social media history, reports Frances Vinall of The Washington Post. The proposal suggests making this information a "mandatory data element" for an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) application, used by tourists and businesspeople coming for up to 90 days.

PERSEVERANCE — "The Somali community I know is everything that conservatives and Republicans claim to want in America," Faisa Ahmed writes in the Minnesota Reformer. "We did not survive civil war, famine and exile just to be intimidated into silence. We have left behind and buried too many, rebuilt too often, and prayed too many times through the darkest hours, to let this break us. Minnesota is our home. America is our home. And our community will not be pushed out."

Thanks for reading,

Dan