Medical residency is a combination of training and work. The resident doctor is an employee, who signs a contract with a hospital and receives a paycheck. So simply, it is a job, and it is the only route that medical school graduates can take to be able to practice medicine in the United States. At some point, it was determined that foreign international medical graduates were an important part of the health care system in the U.S. J-1 and H-1B visas allow foreign international medical graduates to come to the U.S. and start their residency training. But this should not leave thousands of American medical graduates and American international medical graduates without residency training and, thus, no jobs and no ability to practice medicine.
Residency training is expensive. It costs taxpayers billions of dollars to train foreign medical graduates.
Why would we spend billions of dollars to train foreign medical doctors and leave American citizens without jobs? Why would the U.S. give foreigners the pathway to medical practice – license to work – and leave its own U.S. citizen doctors to live in poverty?
M.A MD
Unmatched MD
White-Collar Workers of America 