Illegal Border Crossings Today:

Mothers, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Doctors… Because the Industry Doesn’t Want Them

Healthcare professional at hospital

Becoming a doctor used to be the ultimate ticket to successin America. It took brains and hard work, but once you put the initials M.D.after your name all the effort paid off. Doctors enjoyed respect and financialsuccess, and rarely had to worry about whether they would find work.

Becoming a doctor today still requires brains and a lot ofhard work, and generally acquiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in studentloan debt in the process. What it no longer commands is respect, financialsuccess, or even a fair chance to practice your profession in the country whereyou were born and studied. American doctors are facing the same sort of employmentdiscrimination that workers in many other fields face: Their industry now prefersworkers from other countries.

While the United States is facing an unprecedented health care crisis, more than 6,500 recent American medical school graduates do not even have the chance to practice medicine. They have been “passed over by residency programs around the country,” writes Dr. Esther Raja, who advocates for these unemployed physicians. All of these idled health care professionals, whose skills should be at a premium have already passed rigorous licensing exams. “At the same time, the government continues to issue thousands of visas to foreign doctors each year, ­despite the medical talent languishing at home,” she notes.

The deck is stacked against Americans who graduate fromAmerican medical schools. Foreign doctors are just more profitable. To beginwith, Dr. Raja explains, the Educational Commission for Foreign MedicalGraduates (ECFMG), which has to certify foreign doctors applying for J-1 visas,collects about $1,050 for each one they certify. The ECFMG also charges theforeign doctors $4,000 in exam fees. It’s a very lucrative practice for theECFMG, which pocketed $90 million in revenues in 2018.

Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, pay the cost of havingtheir citizens do their residency at U.S. hospitals. A Saudi resident cangenerate hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenues for the American hospitalwhere they train.

In addition, notes Dr. Raja, “Many residency-programadministrators were themselves J-1 visa holders at one point. And they show abias for their countrymen. It’s no coincidence that roughly 50 percent of allforeign doctors on J-1 visas hail from just three countries — Canada, India andPakistan.”

Rather than spur calls for enabling American doctors to practice medicine in the United States, the COVID-19 crisis has done precisely the opposite. It has intensified the pressure to admit still more foreign doctors who already account for about 30 percent of practicing physicians. Immigration advocates demand that any foreign national who has ever touched a stethoscope be granted permanent U.S. residency – a provision that was included in the House approved HEROES Act.

We’re told we have a shortage of doctors in the United States – that we have one of the lowest ratios of doctors to population in the developed world. We don’t. Like so many other fields, what we have a system that discriminates against our own best workers, in favor of foreigners.