Thread: Foreign-born physicians fear immigration backlash

ALMOST ALL COMPANIES USE TO DO THIS. YOU WOULD JUST START OUT IN AN "ENTRY LEVEL" POSITION AND WORK YOUR WAY UP. YOU GOT HEALTH INSURANCE AND DENTAL INSURANCE AND A PENSION.

IF YOU TOOK RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR JOB AND SHOWED UP EVERYDAY AND TOOK YOUR JOB SERIOUSLY.....YOU COULD COUNT ON KEEPING THAT JOB FOR LIFE. AND YOU COULD COUNT ON RETIREMENT.

I remember those days. It was a time when interviewing for a job wasn't dragged out over several weeks, and resumes were kept simple and not overblown with trivial crap. All you needed was an education and any job experience you accumilated along the way. And an interview was kept simple, with usually one person doing the interviewing, and a decision to hire was usually told to you that same day. An employee could count on a life long career with benefits and a pension/retirement package.
I have to agree with tinybobidaho who said
"Most of the problems in this country, leads right back to illegal alien population."

I was talking to a colleague who grew up in St. Louis, about my age (50s) and she remarked that when she was growing up, you'd have to be some kind of bum not to have a job, as there were so many vigorous, thriving businesses in the area, and someone was always hiring.

In the mid 90s I did IT work as a short term contractor. It was so easy for the companies to bypass the trouble of hiring and screening someone, and just get a body from the bodyshop. The bodyshops are still there, just not placing Americans.

Physicians have tried to protect their professional pay and status by imposing entry barriers. Big business is trying to get around that with the help of the desperate, crowded third world. Same in IT, same in education, starting to be the same in finance and many other professions.
The illegals from down south are doing the same at the lower end of the work spectrum - many of them are brokered and placed by bodyshops too. A manager at some processing plant can call these guys and order 10-50 workers or so, like he was ordering a pizza.

Several years ago, our Dr.'s told Washington they didn't want foreign Doctors here, as it would depress their wages!

So, since they were a rich bunch, they stopped it for a while.....where are they now?

Just a guess -- Perhaps the cheap labor lobby from HMO's and the insurance industry is stronger than the American Medical Association.

Our system sets high standards for Americans to get into medical school, and competition to get in is fierce. As a result, many qualified American students cannot get it in to study medicine.

25 percent is huge! It's outrageous that so many doctors are imported. Why not open more US medical schools?

I guess that so many doctors are imported to keep wages in HMO facilities low.

Ceelynn, I don't know where you got your information, but it is inaccurate and not in the article.

1. Competition for medical school is fierce, but has nothing to do with foreign students. They get their medical school training elsewhere and then apply for their residency program in the US.

2. All foreign applicants must pass a very difficult entrance exam before even being considered. And even if they pass, it is difficult getting into what is perceived as a "good" specialty, such as surgery. Their fluency in written and spoken English is assessed and is a reason either not to accept or to fire. Many try and retry, some apply to programs that do not fill their residency slots, such as family practice, and then after a year try and transfer to their desired program. I know this because I have been involved with residency programs.

3. More medical schools are NOT the answer. I posted a discussion on that elsewhere. These foreign doctors are far more willing to accept jobs in rural or other "undesirable" places which Americans are not, We can talk elsewhere about the reasons if you like, but not here.

4. I have worked with foreign doctors for almost 30 years and the majority of them are dedicated, caring physicians. Of course, there are jerks, but they can be taken care of. I've done it. Some of the very best physicians in the USA are foreign born.

5. Foreign doctor are NOT imported by HMOs to keep wages low. HMOs do that already to American docs.

Ceelynn, I am not picking on you, we all need to know the facts about what we post. Believe me, I learned the hard way to check my facts (and my emotions!) before I hit the send key.

Affirmative Action, Immigration, Curing America Of White Doctors
White male medical school graduates declined from 10,064 in 1980 to 5,678 in 2004. As a share of med school graduates, white males fell from more than two-thirds (69.6%) to just above one-third (36.8%) over that period. (Source: Association of American Medical Colleges, Minorities in Medical Education: Facts and Figures 2005, 2005, Figures 15 and 17, pdf]

What’s going on?

In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Allan Bakke, who had claimed he was rejected from medical school because of his race—white. Justice Lewis Powell, in his opinion in the case, admitted that Bakke's Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) scores did indeed place him in the top tier of test-takers, whereas the average scores of the quota beneficiaries placed them in the bottom third. So Bakke was clearly more qualified than those admitted under the quota. Yet Mr. Powell’s opinion ruled that the state had a "substantial interest" in using race as a criterion for admission.

Fast forward to 2003. Jordan Cohen, the head of the Association of American Medical Colleges, is quoted as opining that "medical school admission committees have probably placed a heavier weight on an applicants race than Justice Powell may have envisioned when he wrote the decisive opinion in the landmark Bakke case in 1978." [Achieving the Educational Value of Diversity, Michael E. Whitcomb, MD, Academic Medicine, May 2003]

The racial composition of medical students has changed dramatically since Bakke, albeit not in the way the pro-quota crowd expected. Here are figures for medical school enrollment - number and percent of total - by race/ethnicity: (Table 1.)

U.S. Medical School Enrollment by

race/ethnicity, 1978-2005


1978
2005
% change

Total
60,039
67,446
12.3%

White
51,974
42,640
-18.0%

Asian
1,422
13,745
866.6%

Black
3,587
4,990
39.1%

Hispanic
1,914
4,702
145.7%


Percent of total enrollment:


1978
2005
% change

Total
100.0%
100.0%
0.0%

White
86.6%
63.2%
-27.0%

Asian
2.4%
20.4%
760.4%

Black
6.0%
7.4%
23.8%

Hispanic
3.2%
7.0%
118.7%

Source: Association of American Medical Colleges.


Since 1978, overall white enrollment has declined significantly, to less than two-thirds (63%) of total enrollment. But the gap has primarily been filled by Asians. The Asian share of medical school enrollment—a fifth (20.4 percent) in 2005—was about 5-times larger than their share of the U.S. population. Back in 1978 only 2.4% of med students were Asian.

Some portion of this enrollment is immigrants and the children of immigrants. But, as usual, the data is not collected.

Meanwhile, the "underrepresented" minorities that Bakke was supposed to help are still underrepresented. The Black and Hispanic shares of medical school enrollment, 7.4 percent and 7.0 percent, respectively, are about half their population shares.

The average quality of white med school applicants appears to have gone up over this period, as evidenced by an increase in their acceptance rates from 40.5 % in 1978 to 52.1% in 2004. Acceptance rates for Asian, Black, and Hispanic applicants in 2004 were, respectively, 48.0 percent, 41.4 percent, and 41.3 percent. [Association of American Medical Colleges, Minorities in Medical Education: Facts and Figures 2005, 2005. Table 19. PDF]

Total enrollment in U.S. medical schools has remained virtually unchanged for more than twenty years: in the range of 65,000 to 67,000. Yet the AAMC’s Dr. Cohen and other observers have warned of an oversupply of physicians in some communities.

Behind this apparent anomaly: immigrant doctors. The number of foreign-born physicians practicing or doing their residencies in the U.S. has more than tripled since 1970. (Table 2.)

Nationally, an astonishing 23 percent of all physicians are foreign. The heaviest concentration of foreign medical graduates in 2005 was in New Jersey (39.6% of doctors); New York (38.6%); Florida (33.6%); and Illinois (32.3%).

Most foreign doctors come here on the J-1 guest worker visa. J-1 visa holders are required to return to their native countries after completing their hospital residency, and practice there before applying to return to the U.S.

But most don't go back: A loophole allows them to stay if they are hired by a hospital in a rural or inner city neighborhood. And public policy has stimulated physician demand in exactly these areas.

Additionally, in recent years doctors from India, Pakistan and other countries have by-passed the J-1 entirely. Instead, they are securing an H1-B, which doesn't require rural or inner-city service, and are working in the big urban areas also preferred by most native-born MDs for professional and lifestyle reasons.

At the end of the day, not just affirmative action but also immigration policy is on the way to curing America of white doctors.

Edwin S. Rubenstein (email him) is President of ESR Research Economic Consultants in Indianapolis.

http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/070509_nd.htm

Originally Posted by ceelynn

Just a guess -- Perhaps the cheap labor lobby from HMO's and the insurance industry is stronger than the American Medical Association.

BINGO!