Trump Travel Restrictions Bar Residents Needed at U.S. Hospitals

Trump Travel Restrictions Bar Residents Needed at U.S. Hospitals
Limits on travel and visa appointments have delayed or prevented foreign doctors from entering the country for jobs set to begin in weeks.

Foreign medical residents often serve as the frontline caregivers at busy safety-net hospitals in low-income communities. Normally the residents begin work on July 1. Orientation programs for some of them already started this week.

Now some of those hospitals are racing to prevent staffing shortages.

“If international medical graduates can’t start their medical residencies on time on July 1, the ramifications are so far-reaching that it is really unconscionable,” said Kimberly Pierce Burke, executive director of the Alliance of Independent Academic Medical Centers.

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Many of the 6,653 noncitizen doctors accepted for residency positions in the United States this year had already secured visa appointments before May 27. Those from banned countries who are already in the country are able to remain.

But an estimated 1,000 medical residents were not able to obtain visas allowing them to work in the United States. The vacancies will have disparate effects on hospitals, depending how heavily reliant they are on foreign medical talent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/health/medical-residents-travel-ban.html