Science know no bounds . After all , a middling part of the world ’s most prestigious scientistswere refugee , including Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger . Even Soviet Union cosmonaut and US astronautsshook hands in spacein 1971 in an act of cross - border solidarity , during the height of the Cold War . It ’s a custom that continue today , even against growing anti - immigration sentiments in much of the Western world .

The United States had six science achiever at the 2016 Nobel Prizes . All of them are immigrant .

Sir Fraser Stoddart was awarded theNobel Prize in Chemistry“for the design and synthesis of molecular machine . ” He was born in Edinburgh , Scotland but became a naturalized citizen of the US .

David Thouless , Duncan Haldane , and Michael Kosterlitz were awarded theNobel Prize in Physics“for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transition and topological phase of matter . ” Thouless and Kosterlitz were born in Scotland , and Haldane was originally from England .

Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström were awarded theNobel Prize in Economics“for their contributions to contract theory . ” Holmström was deport in Finland and Hart was born in England .

Of course , there was a seventh American Nobel laureate   this year if you include the Nobel lit prize : songwriter and poet Bob Dylan , whose grandparent were Eastern European Jews who follow to the US escaping anti - Semite persecution in the early 20th century .

As a wider course , skill in the US has increasingly benefited from the fruits of in-migration over the past decade .

The number of immigrant scientists and locomotive engineer in the US has risen from 3.4 million to 5.2 million between 2003 and 2013 , agree toa reportby the National Science Foundation . In entire , nearly 20 percent of the skill and engineering science workforce are immigrants .

This includes 3 million scientist emigrate from Asia , 1 million from Europe , 330,000 from Africa , and over 600,000 from Central and South America .

" I cerebrate the reverberative subject matter that should go out all around the world is that science is globose , " Sir J Fraser Stoddart , one of the three laureate in chemistry , toldThe Hill .

" It ’s peculiarly pertinent to have these discussions in view of the political clime on both sides of the pond at the mo … I think the United States is what it is today largely because of open borders . "