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?