Lifting the pause on foreign physicians signals that the administration’s broad immigration restrictions may not be working as intended.
Since reclaiming the presidency last year, Donald Trump has introduced a host of immigration rules that he argues will benefit the American public. The administration recently revised one of those measures, a change that suggests it may not achieve its original aims.
Beginning in January, the administration froze “decisions on visa extensions, work permits and green cards for citizens of 39 countries,” The New York Times reported. A presidential proclamation cited the need to shield Americans “from foreign nationals who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security and public safety, incite hate crimes, or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes.” It outlined very narrow exceptions—for instance, “any athlete or member of an athletic team” traveling “for the World Cup, Olympics, or other major sporting event.”
In May, the Trump administration tacitly acknowledged this broad restriction may not serve the national interest. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services quietly updated its website “to indicate that physicians are no longer subject to the processing hold,” and the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that it would “resume issuing visas and work permits for the group,” The New York Times reported.
Foreign-born professionals are essential to the country’s medical workforce: approximately a quarter of American doctors are international medical graduates. Rural counties and communities rely especially on foreign-born physicians. Their importance is likely to grow over the next decade, as the United States is projected to face a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036, according to an estimate from the Association of American Medical Colleges. The visa pause was “forcing physicians who’ve lived in the U.S. for years to stop working and exacerbating staffing shortages that are a longstanding headache for hospital administrators,” Politico reported in April.
Many obstacles remain for foreign doctors. Delays in processing visa waiver applications for a program administered by the Department of Health and Human Services could mean that “hundreds of foreign doctors about to complete training in the U.S. will have to leave the country” imminently, KFF Health News reported in May. Hospitals are also finding it difficult to sponsor international physicians because of the $100,000 H-1B visa fee that the Trump administration introduced last fall. “Canada and other countries are trying to recruit these doctors away from the U.S., offering incentives like fast-tracked permanent resident status,” A Axios noted in March.
The carveout for foreign doctors is a positive development, but it addresses only a sliver of a larger problem. Imprecise immigration restrictions harm the country in ways that decision makers can’t—or won’t—imagine.
