As an Indian working as a biology postdoc, I can't speak to the experiences for people in physics, but at least in biology at this level Americans don't seem ve

As an Indian working as a biology postdoc, I can't speak to the experiences for people in physics, but at least in biology at this level Americans don't seem very interested. At my midsize institute that's got a reasonable reputation, I would be hard pressed to name a single American postdoc. Almost all the PhD students are American, and almost none of the postdocs. Chinese & Indians alone account for probably 60-70% of the postdocs, and they are the ones who stick around the longest (probably due to the extremely high bar both these nationalities face in terms of getting work visas). Speaking to the American PhDs the most common refrain I hear is an unwillingness to accept a postdoc salary for a couple of years (currently around ~ $55K) - when industry jobs are relatively easy to get for American nationals, and come with double the salary.