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Healthcare Groups 'Disappointed' With Supreme Court's Travel Ban Ruling

Analysis  |  By John Commins  
   June 26, 2018

The various iterations of the travel ban—which mostly target Muslim-majority nations—have been highly contentious among healthcare providers, many of whom worry it will worsen access to care.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed President Donald Trump's authority to restrict foreign nationals from entering the country, upholding a controversial ban on travelers from seven countries.

Some fear the ban, which applies mostly to Muslim-majority nations, could worsen an already-critical shortage of healthcare workers in the United States.

“We are deeply disappointed in the Court’s decision," Association of American Medical Colleges President and CEO Darrell G. Kirch, MD, said in a statement released shortly after the 5-4 ruling.

The AAMC had filed an amicus brief with the high court challenging a series of executive actions over the past 18 months that imposed nationality-based exclusions, asserting that the actions would worsen the nation's health-professions shortage and impair its ability to advance medicine and protect public health.

With the court's ruling that this proclamation is within the president's legal discretion, the debate now shifts to Congress, Kirch said.

"The AAMC will continue its efforts to educate legislators about the direct link between fair immigration policies and the health of Americans, and to advocate for immigration policies that recognize the critical role that health professionals from other countries play in safeguarding our nation’s health security,” he said.

The various iterations of the travel ban have been highly contentious among healthcare providers, many of whom believe it will only worsen access to healthcare in underserved areas, especially in rural America:

  • When the first ban attempt was announced in early 2017 shortly after Trump took office, the Migration Policy Institute noted that more than 22% of all healthcare workers were immigrants, and 28% of those healthcare workers were surgeons or physicians.
       
  • It's not clear how or if the travel ban will affect the Conrad 30 J-1 visa waiver, which allows international medical students to stay in the United States after residency for three years if they work in a rural or urban community where there is a physician shortage.
     
  • By some estimates, the Conrad 30 J-1 Visa Waiver by itself has brought nearly 10,000 physicians into rural and urban underserved communities over the past 10 years.

The American College of Physicians, which filed an amicus brief of its own opposing Trump's travel ban, released a statement Tuesday reiterating its disappointment.

"We urge the administration and Congress to affirm the paramount importance of non-discrimination against any person based on religion, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation in all decisions relating to immigration policy, and particularly, to undo the harm to patients, the [international medical graduates] who treat them, and to medical education that will result from the President’s Executive Office and the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold it," ACP President Ana María López, MD, MPH, FACP, said.

John Commins is a content specialist and online news editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.


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