Thread: Chicago med school enrolls undocumented immigrants

Chicago med school enrolls undocumented immigrants

By Tammy Worth
AUGUST 13, 2014



Dive Brief:

• At a time when the immigration debate has reached a smoldering point, one medical school has begun accepting undocumented immigrants into its program. Loyola University Chicago is waiving the legal residency requirement for students, a moved spurred by President Obama's Dream Act.
• Undocumented students are not eligible for federal financial aid for the program’s $200,000 tuition costs. The university is working with a state agency to provide loans for medical and dental schools to disperse to undocumented students.
• The school has received more than 100 inquiries into the program and a handful of students have been admitted this fall.

Dive Insight:

This is a controversial move on the part of the school, which is on the forefront of the immigration issue. But what does this mean for the healthcare workforce? Not all states actively request citizenship information for people requesting a medical license. Last spring, the California Senate passed a bill that would allow undocumented immigrants to receive professional licenses with just a taxpayer identification number. In January, the California Supreme Court granted a law license to an undocumented man.

Other medical programs are also seeking ways to fill a void in care. The University of California Los Angeles' International Medical Graduate Program is enrolling foreign-born and foreign-educated students into its family medicine program. They take students who already have medical education in another country and provide the training necessary to work in the United States. The students have to work for a period of time in underserved communities. This allows the students to finish their degree and use their bilingual and bicultural attributes in communities in need.

http://www.healthcaredive.com/news/c...grants/297369/

BTTT