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Comment by KorematsuFredt | Hacker News Reader

Nursing is a different problem altogether. A vast majority of healthcare staff in USA is immigrants. Nurses from Phillipines, India etc. Doctors primarily from India, Pakistan, Iran etc.

Trump's war on immigration definitely hurt these groups massively followed by the green card backlog for Indians. Thousands of Indian doctors and nurses left their jobs and went back to India creating a major stress on the healthcare sector and especially the rural areas. H1B visa is oversubscribed by 8x these days and Doctors and Nurses get pushed out by tech companies. No one wants to hire a doctor with only 1/8 probability of joining due to visa issues.

As more people age and we have young people moving out of smaller towns, this problem is going to become even bigger.

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> Nursing is a different problem altogether. A vast majority of healthcare staff in USA is immigrants. Nurses from Phillipines, India etc. Doctors primarily from India, Pakistan, Iran etc.

Citation? I can’t find information on immigration/citizenship status specifically, but the racial demographics of doctors[0] and RNs[1] do not reflect your claims.

[0]: https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/workforce/data/figure-18-p...

[1]: https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/fact-sheets/nursing-wo....

I’m not sure you have any basis for your argument. There are certainly a lot of immigrants in those fields, but absolutely not a vast majority.

Good point. Nonetheless, there's no back filling of the openings. Those who could aren't interested. In addition, Uncle Sam is too busy chasing his tail (e.g., the quarterly or so debt ceiling / budget crisis).

> Trump's war on immigration definitely hurt these groups massively

Sorry what? What policies were implemented that hurt legal immigrant doctors and nurses?

There aren't many illegal alien doctors.

Not in official hospitals, but there are absolutely neighborhood places that aren't licensed, where they work as doctors.

Yeah, there's a lot of unlicensed pharmacists coming over the border as well.

> What policies were implemented that hurt legal immigrant doctors and nurses?

Trump's war on immigrants did not differentiate between legal vs illegal. One common problem I have seen for example is asking (via RFE) a MD as to why his profession is considered "speciality" and asking to prove this job needed a special degree.

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