dagblog - Comments for "How Trump’s immigration ban threatens health care, in 3 charts"

Despite Judge’s Order, a

artappraiser — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 10:17:42 +0000

Despite Judge’s Order, a Cleveland Clinic Doctor Still Can’t Come Back to U.S.

by Charles Ornstein
ProPublica, Feb. 6, 2:16 p.m.

A federal judge’s order has allowed many people with visas to come to the U.S. But Dr. Suha Abushamma isn’t one of them. She was forced to give up her visa. And now she’s suing.

Update: After Officials Sign Off, Cleveland Clinic Doctor Secretly Returns Home

by Charles Ornstein
ProPublica, Feb. 7, 1:08 p.m.

Suha Abushamma had been forced to leave the United States after President Donald Trump’s travel ban. She sued, and high-level discussions led to her return yesterday.

If she is brown or Muslim

NCD — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 01:59:28 +0000

In reply to Broad Challenge to Trump

If she is brown or Muslim acting President Bannon believes she is part of the secret global Jihad to destroy the white Aryan Race.

Although the GOP probably hasn't packed enough courts for that argument to prevail.

Broad Challenge to Trump

artappraiser — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 00:48:30 +0000

In reply to How Trump’s immigration ban threatens health care, in 3 charts

Broad Challenge to Trump Order May Center on Cleveland Doctor (already working on H-1B Visa from Sudan, returning from short visit with family, was deported from airport)

By Alan Feuer, New York Times, Feb. 3, 2017

Just minutes after a federal judge blocked part of President Trump’s immigration order on Saturday night, ruling that no one with a valid visa should be deported, someone was, according to court papers filed on Thursday.

Her name is Suha Amin Abdullah Abushamma, a Sudanese doctor with a valid H-1B foreign-worker visa who was working at the Cleveland Clinic, in Ohio, in a residency program.

“She left for vacation thinking she’d be gone for a short time, and then she couldn’t come back to her home,” Dr. Abushamma’s lawyer, Jennifer Kroman, said on Thursday evening. “It raises not only constitutional questions, but questions about the importance of court orders.”

Mr. Trump said his immigration order, restricting entry to the United States by people from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Sudan, was intended to make the country safe from Islamic terrorists. But according to lawyers for immigrants who were barred, the order caught in its web dozens of people like Dr. Abushamma, who graduated at the top of her class from medical school.

Dr. Abushamma’s case was highlighted at a hearing in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Thursday, where Judge Carol B. Amon extended until Feb. 21 the initial ruling — formally known as a stay of removal — issued last week by her colleague, Judge Ann M. Donnelly.

Judge Amon will be presiding over the case and deciding on the legal issues underlying the executive order, while at the same time overseeing nine cases in which plaintiffs say they were improperly deported.

The Thursday hearing before Judge Amon was largely procedural and was held to set out the schedule for arguments and motions in coming weeks. But in a separate action the day before, Judge Amon ordered the government to explain in writing by mid-February why she should not allow Dr. Abushamma to return to the United States, where the doctor is engaged to be married to a fellow physician.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs described Dr. Abushamma’s detention and deportation during Thursday’s hearing.

Four days before Mr. Trump signed the executive order, Dr. Abushamma had flown to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia to spend time with her family [....]

Emma's statement about H1-B

artappraiser — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 18:09:05 +0000

In reply to How Trump’s immigration ban threatens health care, in 3 charts

Emma's statement about H1-B visas interested me as from what I have read in business news, a lot of tech companies were freaking out that Trump was planning to crack down on those. So I dug into it a little more.

Yglesias on Jan. 31 summarizing Trump's suggested changes regarding foreign guest workers laws in the draft memo

A broad crackdown on guest workers

The order, titled “Protecting American Jobs and Workers by Strengthening the Integrity of Foreign Worker Visa Programs,” proposes taking aim at a range of nonimmigrant visa programs that let foreign-born people live and work in the United States for a limited span of time.

One provision would shorten the span of time a foreigner is allowed to work in the United States under the Optional Practical Training rule. OPT allows a foreigner who had a student visa to work for a limited amount of time in the United States after graduation. The Obama administration expanded the OPT window from 12 months to 17 months.

Two provisions deal with H-1B visas that allow companies to hire foreign-born guest workers with technical skills. Obama acted to give the spouses of H-1B holders permission to work, thus de facto expanding the foreign-born skilled workforce through the back door. Trump will reverse that. The order would direct agencies to “consider ways” to alter the way the program works to “ensure that beneficiaries of the program are the best and the brightest.” This likely means trying to ensure that H-1Bs largely go to America’s best-known and highest paying tech companies, rather than, as is frequently the case today, serving to help companies that mostly do back-office outsourcing work.

Another provision would call for a Department of Homeland Security crackdown on L-1 visas, featuring “site visits.” L-1s are designed to allow companies to transfer foreign-born managers to oversee US-based operations, but in a practical sense serve a similar role to H-1Bs in generally allowing for skilled temporary workers.

Another provision targets the J-1 Summer Work Travel Program, which largely brings foreign workers to do seasonal retail work in beach towns and other communities that see a summertime influx. It’s not clear that Trump really can do much of anything here, but the order directs the State Department to “improve protections of US workers.”

Other even vaguer provisions direct DHS to “improve monitoring of foreign students” and “clarify comprehensively” that visitors on tourist visas aren’t allowed to work in the United States.

It’s noteworthy that the draft does not target two of the largest guest-worker visa categories, neither the H-2A visa for seasonal agricultural workers or the H-2B visa for seasonal nonagricultural workers. Perhaps by coincidence, Trump uses H-2B workers at Mar-a-Lagoand H-2A workers at Trump Vineyard.

I wanted to understand the situation with upper level medical workers once and for all, so I did some googling.

Here is a law firm's page that clearly describes how the H1-B works for hospitals to get doctors. It looks like its not hard at all to get foreign doctors here because they are needed right now, no "best and brightest" filter, just that they are a specialist doctor makes them "best and brightest." If Trump tried to make a stronger filter as to who would be considered "best and brightest" he would end up with people screaming about the wait lists for hospital procedures.On the other hand, if Trump tried to deny the ability of H1-B doctor's spouses to work in this country, I can't see that causing major issues only minor ones, a small tick down in the number is all that would happen.

Here is one as regards nurses, the major filter there is that they must be nurses with at least a bachelor's degree, and most nurses only have an associate degree. This explains why those of us with lots of experience in hospitals don't see as many nurses that seem to be recent immigrants as we do doctors.

Pharmacists are similar.

Surprising find that workers like Physical Therapists have several options for visas! They are subject to the bachelor's degree rule for H1-B, but then there's trying to get a green card. AND In addition to the above two popular options available to come and work in the US, physical therapists from Canada and Mexico have an additional visa option available to them - the TN. In this article we will present a snapshot on the popular Physical Therapist visa option available exclusively to Canadian and Mexican Citizen physical therapists – The Physical Therapist TN Visa

I imagine there might have been other legislation for similar professions to create specialized temporary work visas for the medical industry when the need popped up?

Wait for Trumpcare. HHS Sec

NCD — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 23:41:13 +0000

In reply to Well, the point to takeaway,

Wait for Trumpcare. HHS Sec.Tom Price (who hasn't practiced for 20 years, and when he did it was as a specialist) has the plan......with 'risk pools'.

He funds them nation wide for $1 billion/year.

Health market experts say risk pools are a very bad way to fund care, and estimate they would cost $152 billion a year to match Obamacare's coverages. Think of doctors with waiting lists measured in years and hospitals going broke with emergency care.

And then there is the Trump plan to block grant Medicaid....

"... some of us with

EmmaZahn — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 23:23:09 +0000

In reply to Well, the point to takeaway,

"... some of us with experience in hospitals these days have come across doctors with differing heritage that seem dangerously angry to the point of maybe going postal, likely more about the current health care system rather than any sociopolitical issues."

Not only those with a different heritage and not only doctors. :)

The Vox post seemed to me unnecessarily alarmist as well as counterproductive. H1B immigrants are likely safe enough as long as they are not used as political pawns. Trump and cohorts like to make the left squeal. Touting H1B healthcare providers as special cases could motivate them to make an example or few from them.

Well, the point to takeaway,

artappraiser — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 19:26:13 +0000

In reply to So Vox is arguing that

Well, the point to takeaway, I think, is that it's not something that can be fixed by making foreign health care workers from these countries leave right now, it would make quite a mess in an already understaffed system.

I even think that if they dragged all of the health workers from those countries into Immigration for interviews, they might even find like 1 out of 500 with strong sympathies with Islamic extremism, constantly steaming about injustice to Muslims, along the lines of Nidal Hasan. (Though not from Iran, the inclusion of any Shia country much less Iran is just plain goofy.) But then, some of us with experience in hospitals these days have come across doctors with differing heritage that seem dangerously angry to the point of maybe going postal, likely more about the current health care system rather than any sociopolitical issues.

So Vox is arguing that

EmmaZahn — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 12:22:09 +0000

In reply to How Trump’s immigration ban threatens health care, in 3 charts

So Vox is arguing that immigration is good because it lowers healthcare costs by keeping wages of healthcare workers lower than they would otherwise be? How is that a good thing?

FWIW, not that many years ago, before metro Atlanta expanded, many immigrant doctors passed through the local hospital and clinics as long-time community doctors and nurses retired. They never stayed very long. As soon as they could manage to find a more urban post, they were gone and often replaced by someone from yet another culture. It can be really hard to be that cosmopolitan when you're at you're weakest and most vulnerable.