Friends, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a national health care professional shortage in the US and globally. This shortage is projected to worsen assuming doctors continue to become exposed, infected and quarantined or ill. As a health care professional and as a human being this is terrifying. 

Bottom line: This country needs more doctors and they need them now! By signing this petition you support removing the limit or temporarily easing restrictions on the state imposed limit of J1 visa waivers issued to foreign national physicians who completed residency and fellowship here in the US, to allow them to stay in the US and practice medicine. 

The federal government has already lifted restriction on HIPAA regulations so as to ease access for doctors and patients to communicate via telemedicine and doctors are now permitted to practice across state lines without a state specific license. Doctors across the globe and in the US are reportedly being asked to come out of retirement to help out in hospitals. Italian medical students are being fast tracked into clinical practice before completing medical school and residency training to help deal with this crisis.

Have you ever heard about the J1 exchange visitors program for health care professionals?  Did you know that the federal and state governments impose an annual limit on the number of immigrant physicians that are allowed to enter the US and practice medicine here?

A J-1 visa is a non-immigrant visa issued to foreign nationals by the United States to research scholars, professors and exchange visitors participating in programs that promote cultural exchange, especially to obtain medical or business training within the U.S. In order to obtain this visa, the candidate in this case, doctor, agrees to sign a two-year return to home country requirement upon completion of the training period. This means that when a foreign national comes to the US to pursue residency and fellowship training, they must do so on the condition that as soon as their training is complete, they leave the country for two years before they can return to the US and apply for a green card to work. Many doctors in this situation are married to American citizens others have large families here in the US but are unable to naturalize because of this return to home country requirement.

There is a state sponsored program called the Conrad 30 program which was created to help keep J1 visa doctors in the US by waiving this 2 year return to home country requirement on the condition that the physician agrees to work in a federally designated health professional shortage region / medically under served area. In lieu of the COVID-19 pandemic, the whole country has effectively become "a health professional shortage region / medically under served area". Every year hundreds if not thousands of applicant doctors apply for these visa waivers but are denied a waiver because of the state imposed limit of 30 on the number of waivers issued per state per year. Obviously some states have more applications than others. States like NY, Florida, California are considered desirable states to practice in therefore hundreds of applications are submitted to those states per year, but only 30 doctors are chosen. To be clear these are doctors who were trained in the US and have job offers to work in the US but are being disallowed to practice because of these state imposed limits.

Many of these doctor applicants are primary care doctors and many others specialists including pulmonologists, infectious disease specialists, anesthesiologists and others who could serve this country well especially in the current pandemic. 

The J1 visa program was created to allow doctors to come to the US to train but requiring they return to their home country likely so as not to disrupt the health care job market for American born and trained physicians. However, given the current situation we urge the state departments of health to at least temporarily lift these restrictions so that doctors who completed training in the US be allowed to continue to work here instead of having to return to their home countries for two years. 

Now more than ever we need all hands on deck! If you support increasing the number of state sponsored waivers or removing the limit all together which will effectively increase the number of immigrant physicians allowed to stay in the US and practice medicine, please lend your support by signing the above petition. 

Thank you!