More foreign-trained doctors are opting for a H1-B, which allows them to practice in urban areas:
Today hundreds of doctors from India, Pakistan and other countries are bypassing the J-1, which gives doctors eligibility for a green card if they first spend three years in an underserved area. Instead, many foreign doctors are securing an H1-B, which doesn’t require the rural stint, and are working in the big urban areas they prefer for professional and lifestyle reasons.Like their American counterparts, foreign doctors say working in rural areas often means few chances to hone their specialties or work with cutting-edge technology. Working in an underserved area can also mean long and lonely hours. “It’s like serving jail time,” says Minoo Kavarana, a Mumbai native working in Appalachia as a heart surgeon on a J-1 waiver. While Dr. Kavarana calls his work rewarding, he says he will leave London, Ky., after his required three years unless the hospital builds a new heart-surgery facility.
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If it is like serving jail time, they can always go back to their own country and live it up.
Many, many of these VISAS are abusive. One physician I know got a J1 for practice in a small town about 30 miles outside a major metropolitan area. Sure enough he bought a million dollar house in the city, opened a satellite office in the city, and now exclusively practices in the city. This same doctor sports a handicapped placard hanging from the rearview mirror of his Mercedes even though he has no disability.
Sorry but some of these folks have come from corrupt environments in other countries and exploit every opportunity here as a result. This has nothing to do with the quality of medicine practiced, but everything to do with the integrity of the medical profession.
Well come on, they didn’t come here to meet unmet needs, when the US has more specialists from their homeland than their homeland has!
The best medical foreign aid program the US could enact, that wouldn’t cost a dime, would be to cut these visa’s off.
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