Halting immigration, hunting talent

This month, the Henley global passport index, which ranks the clout of nations' citizenship, offered a quiet but telling signal about shifting global soft power. For the first time in two decades, the United States passport slipped out of the world's top ten, and is now ranked twelfth—alongside Malaysia. The US economy is robust, its military reach unmatched, and its diplomacy visible from Gaza to the Indo-Pacific. Yet something deeper has changed—an erosion of the magnetism that once made US citizenship the world's most powerful.

- BAIJAYANT 'JAY' PANDA

This decline follows the sharpest reversal in American immigration policy since the 1960s. The Trump administration's harsh crackdown on illegal immigration was predictable, even popular, as Americans saw their borders dissolve into abstraction. But few anticipated the simultaneous tightening on legal immigration—particularly for highly educated professionals and students who have powered America's innovation engine for generations.

For decades, the US has been a magnet for the world's brightest—scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs—who built Silicon Valley, transformed academia, and fuelled its technological dominance. That open-door policy for skilled individuals not only defined American prosperity but also catalysed the “brain drain” from developing countries like India.