Immigrant doctors in rural America are sick of waiting for green cards

[IronLionZion]

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/08/news/economy/immigrant-doctors-green-card-backlog/index.html

Dr. Raghuveer Kura is the only kidney specialist that the town of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, has had at its hospital for the past nine years. He sees nearly 3,000 patients, including 80 who need life-saving dialysis treatments.
"Some of my patients drive from an hour away to see me," said Kura, who is also chief of medicine at Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center. "There is no other big hospital in town. This is it."

But now, a possible decades long wait for his green card has forced him to consider leaving Poplar Bluff and the United States behind.

"I have roots in this community. My children are growing up here. I'm paying my taxes and I've built long-lasting relationships with my patients," said Kura, who has also helped set up a dialysis treatment center in town. "But my time spent waiting for a green card seems to be never ending."

'I can't wait another 10 years'
Originally from India, Kura has been in the United States for 17 years, and has temporary worker status through an H-1B visa.

The government approved Kura's application for a green card back in 2014, but he still must wait in line behind hundreds of thousands of other applicants to actually get it. That's because Kura must first transition from his non-immigrant H-1B visa to an immigrant visa before he can receive his permanent resident status.

The United States issues 140,000 employment-based immigrant visas each year. And it limits how many of these visas it doles out to people from individual countries or with certain skills.

While these "job stealers" are thrown out of the country, the doctor shortage worsens tremendously in rural areas. Trump is creating lots of good jobs for rural doctors. Maybe the anti-education GOP voters will jump on these great jobs like white on rice. Or maybe they'll just repeal the ACA and hope people losing their insurance coverage will solve this problem.

The rural areas of America are going to learn the same lesson as the Trump organization's contractors and investors.

[treestar]

1. The quota on employment visas makes no sense

You can only get one if you prove you are not taking a job from a US citizen. So they are just making them wait, just because. Xenophobes were behind these annual limits. The economy would take care of it - the visa would not work in years where there was high unemployment in the US in the field in question.

[roamer65]

2. I hope more rural clinics and hospitals close.

These people need the epiphany and they need it fast.