Foreign doctors coming to the US are leaving their own countries in a difficult situation.
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Our importation of third world medical labor has a number of problems:
1. It is the rich living off the poor. My state has more Indian psychiatrists than India has. We would train all the doctors we needed if we provided adquate financial support for all who are qualified to complete a medical education.
2. It undermines the cohesivieness and therefore the professionalism of physicians, creating a divide between–creating large autonomous ethnic professional communities.
3. It brings into the country large numbers of persons whose professional background is of a different ethical stripe. Plain antisocial attitudes are spread evenly, but the only academic teacher that I had in residency who openly set out to teach residents how to rip patients off was Indian. Many third world countries take fraud and deceit as the daily routine of any commercial or professional enterprise and people bring those values with them. Not all, but many.
4. It brings into the country people who initially are more vulnerable to being used by nefarious operators who need a doctor’s signature to complete their frauds. Their status as new immigrants adds to the factors above to make them particularly vulnerable to being used in this manner. It is necessary for the protection of the public that doctors have the confidence of their place in the society to say no to improper demands and not have to take just any terms because of limited choices. In fact, the opportunity to take advantage of the vulnerability of new immigrants to being used is, I think, the very reason reliance upon them is encouraged by various factions.
Perhaps if primary care physicians in this country were treated and paid better, then doctors trained here would be more likely to fill these spots, instead of going into highly reimbursed specialties.
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