Trump’s Immigration Policy Sidelines Foreign Doctors Amid Shortage

One Nigerian doctor performed knee and hip replacement surgeries at a New York teaching hospital. A Venezuelan physician treated people with diabetes and hypertension in rural Texas. A U.S.-trained ophthalmologist from Iran can no longer perform eye surgeries in Arkansas.

All three physicians have been forced to stop seeing patients after they were pushed out of their jobs because of a Trump administration policy that took effect in January and froze visa extensions, work permits and green cards for citizens of 39 countries as well as people with Palestinian Authority travel documents.

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Foreign doctors currently comprise 25 percent of all doctors practicing in the country, and many have become citizens.

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“We’ve been doing this for decades, and there has always been a pathway forward for foreign physicians,” said Mr. Wizner. “Now it’s just a dead end for those affected by this adjudication pause.”

The affected doctors come from countries included in the ban, mostly from Africa and the Middle East, and are unable to work because they had immigration cases pending when the policy was announced.

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American medical schools do not produce enough doctors. For residency positions starting this July, there were 41,000 residency positions available, according to official data, but only 32,000 applicants from U.S. medical schools.

Some 7,000 foreign doctors were selected to fill the gap, after rigorous exams and background checks. Once they complete training, many take jobs in federally designated underserved areas.

More than 60 percent of the foreign physicians practice primary care, including family medicine, internal medicine and pediatrics, fields that Americans often shun because of punishing workloads and lower pay compared to other specialties.

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