Washington, D.C. (May 26, 2022) - On this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Kevin Lynn, Executive Director of Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), joins us to discuss the displacement of Americans in high-skilled jobs, specifically in the field of medicine. Doctors are required to complete a post-graduate residency program in order to be licensed to practice medicine in the United States. But these taxpayer-funded programs are passing over American physicians who have been educated at U.S. medical schools in favor of foreign doctors who have trained abroad.
America faces a physician shortage, yet this spring 1,431 medical school graduates (7.2% of applicants) failed to match into a residency program at teaching hospitals in the U.S. At the same time, 4,356 foreign–trained doctors – over three times the number of jobless American medical school graduates – attained residency positions, at the cost of $150,000 per year per resident to the taxpayers.
Are American doctors less qualified than those from abroad? Lynn argues that the displacement of U.S. doctors is a product of a greater issue in the American hospital system - profits prioritized over patient health. Hospitals know that doctors from abroad are cheaper and more exploitable.
Kevin Lynn’s project, Doctors Without Jobs, seeks to build awareness of this issue and encourage policy changes that would allow more American doctors to be matched into residency programs.
In his closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and host of Parsing Immigration Policy, discusses his recent trip to Hungary where he spoke with Ukrainians returning home to Kiev despite the continuing war with Russia. Krikorian emphasizes the importance of helping displaced persons in close proximity to their home countries, rather than resettling them in places further away, so they can return home once the immediate emergency has passed.
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