The Department of Homeland Security has restarted processing visas for thousands of foreign doctors from 39 high-risk countries who have been hired by U.S. hospitals.
Pro-migration advocates are celebrating what they hope will be a greater foreign inflow into American hospitals: It “is a great development for physicians and health care in the U.S.,” lawyer Curtis Morrison, who works for employers, told the New York Times.
But the renewed inflow is bad for American patients and bad for the many Americans who want to become doctors, said Kevin Lynn, the director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy.
“This year, over 1,300 [American] graduates from medical schools did not get [hospital training] residencies, but more than 6,000 foreign-trained physicians did get [residencies] at American teaching hospitals,” he said.
The increased inflow of foreigners for “hospitalist” doctor jobs also ensures less professional treatment for Americans, he said. “American [patients] are losing out because they’re not getting American physicians” who can speak English, understand U.S. culture, and will push back against cost-cutting by hospital managers, he added.
Foreigners already hold one-quarter of the physician jobs in the United States — even though many eager and qualified Americans are denied slots at medical schools and training hospitals, he said.
That huge population of foreign doctors also allows closed-door discrimination against Americans who want to become doctors and nurses, Lynn said, because “foreigners [are] willing to keep the door open for more foreigners.”
The reversal by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency came amid a media-magnified campaign by pro-migration lobbyists, and amid partially successful lawsuits by various pro-migration groups against the Department of Homeland Security.
The lawsuits seek to block the agency’s policy of pausing new visas and work permits for many foreigners from 39 suspect countries — including foreign doctors — pending a review of the many sketchy approvals granted during President Joe Biden’s presidency. India, the largest supplier of foreign doctors, is not on the list.
Many Democrats denounced the pause. “This is, unsurprisingly, a heartless betrayal of our nation’s values,” said Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY). Migrant “Dreamers deserve better than this,” he added, without mentioning the impact on Americans.
The agency is restarting the processing but will apply improved vetting procedures to ensure the incoming foreign doctors are not hostile.
The underlying issue is money. Hospitals want to cut operating costs, and Congress does not want to fund enough training opportunities for Americans who want to become doctors or nurses.
Hospital chains want to import cheaper and subservient “hospitalist” doctors and nurses because they are trying to replace American professionals who want good salaries and will argue with cost-cutting managers to protect their patients’ health, Lynn said, adding:
They’re not allowing willing, qualified, and capable Americans [to get into residency training courses because they don’t want to make the [training] investments in our medical infrastructure.
The hospitals prefer to hire migrant doctors from different cultures — such as India or Islamic countries — because they are less likely to push back against their cost-cutting employers, said Lynn. “They can’t — they’ve just arrived, they’re just off the boat, they don’t know why they should push back.”
Many employers are lobbying to import more healthcare workers instead of hiring American professionals — even as hundreds of thousands of American technology professionals have been displaced by H-1B visa workers and AI-enabled job transfers to India.
“Every health care client that I work with is experiencing more barriers to hiring than a year ago in a system that’s already overburdened and has struggled to hire,” Samantha Wolfe, an immigration lawyer for hospitals, told Politico on April 1. The site added:
There are more than 10,000 physician H-1B visa holders in the U.S. and more than 17,000 doctors with J-1s, another type of visa also subject to the hold. Many nurses, lab techs and other health care workers are stuck in the visa pause as well.
Barb Martin, who directs outpatient care hiring for Mercy — a Midwestern health system with 55 hospitals — said that stalled visa petitions have become an “exponential administrative burden” for the system.
“We’re in a position right now where we don’t have a path to offer them employment, especially the specialists,” she said about some medical fellows in visa limbo. “Physician petitions need to be prioritized.”
Establishment-backed media outlets sympathize with foreign doctors and graduates instead of with American graduates, patients, or professionalism. In November, for example, the Washington Post explained the concerns of foreign graduates:
“My [would-be] patients are also suffering, and I’m suffering,” said Mustafa Alawad, a 27-year-old Sudanese doctor in Cairo, who was denied a visa after receiving a job offer from an internal medicine residency program at a community hospital in Huntsville, Alabama. The Trump administration denied him a visa because of a ban on visitors from Sudan. So Alawad has been unable to join his fiancée, a dentist, who is already in the United States.
Nationwide, lobbyists have already persuaded legislators in 17 states to create fast-track approvals so foreign doctors can get hired without going through the professionalism training that Americans learn by growing up in the United States. Lynn said:
There are some 17 states that are either have, or in the process of, creating a licensure procedure for foreign doctors. … This year, over 6,000 got [residency] places at U.S. teaching hospitals.
Well, they’re now making it so that if you’re a foreign doctor and you practice abroad, you won’t have to go through a residency program here.
In a U.S. residency, they’ll teach you all the complexity, liability and human [professional] nuances of working in the American medical system. But these guys are going to come in, work under a [a U.S. or foreign] physician for a year or two, and then they’re going to be licensed by these states to practice medicine on Americans. Think about the opportunities for [jobs-for-sale] fraud in all of this!
“America is doing to its doctors what it already did to its tech workers” via the H-1B visa and Optional Practical Training programs, he added.
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