American doctors face a major hurdle. Many of them can’t find jobs. Graduating from medical school does not mean a doctor can practice medicine. Medical school graduates must complete residency training. Without a residency, a doctor’s career idles leaving them with medical school debt and no way to pay it off. The group Doctors without Jobs has been highlighting this issue for some time and, at the end of January, came to Washington D.C. to make their voices heard. The crux of the issue?
Currently there are 6,570 U.S. citizens who have graduated medical school, are in good standing, but are (as of yet) unmatched with a residency.
Doctors without Jobs highlights the incongruity between the apparent “shortage of doctors” in the United States and the fact that thousands of medical students are sidelined and unable to further their careers through residency training.
Politicians, however, seem convinced that not only is there a shortage of doctors, but that this shortage needs to be resolved admitting foreign doctors into the U.S. and granting them taxpayer-funded residencies. That is why, as Doctors Without Jobs reports, that over 36,000 foreign doctors have been granted these residencies over the past decade. And some politicians are trying to pass legislation that would significantly increase that number.
So, what is Doctors Without Jobs and what do they do? In their own words:
Doctors without Jobs explores why some U.S. citizen medical school graduates in good standing don’t match to residencies and seek to build awareness of the issue. Areas of interest include how to increase the number of residency positions and how the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) policies could prioritize U.S. citizen medical students for residencies, along with how the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) could create policies to provide basic assistance to those who do not obtain residency training.
While tens of thousands of foreign doctors take up residency positions that otherwise qualified and motivated U.S. citizens miss out on, the political and media class turns a blind eye. While the rules and regulations that govern the matching of medical school graduates are undoubtedly as nebulous and complex as the United States’ immigration policy, the plight highlighted by Doctors without Jobs is an easy one to understand, and a symptom of a system that is already broken.
The immigration system in the United States is inherently unbalanced and puts an undue burden on the American workforce. As the COVID-19 Pandemic rages on and millions are still without work, the Biden Administration continues to push for immigration policies that would further put the American worker at a competitive disadvantage to their foreign counterparts.
The inability of U.S. citizen doctors to take on residencies and practice medicine in their own country is another symptom of an immigration system in dire need of reform. Doctors without Jobs is bringing crucial light to a major issue. The more the public is aware of this, and similar hardships facing American workers due to current immigration policies, the more pressure can be put on policymakers to set a more justifiable course.
About NumbersUSA
Created by Roy Beck, the NumbersUSA Education and Research Foundation is a non-profit and non-partisan organization that studies the impacts of numerically high immigration. They propose immigration reform and a return to more traditional and sustainable immigration numbers.
The NumbersUSA Education and Research Foundation serves as a forum for discussion and a center for education on the impacts of unsustainable immigration. It produces videos, interactive maps, and sprawl studies that demonstrate the effects of immigration on environmental topics like green space, CO2 emissions, and oil consumption, as well as economic factors and quality of life.
NumbersUSA Action serves as a grassroots organization with more than 8 million members. Members receive “Action Alerts” on how they can communicate with and persuade their elected officials and policymakers to support immigration policies that protect all Americans, natural-born and naturalized citizens alike, from dwindling quality of life, lost wages, and reduction of green space.
