Editor’s note: Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon, served as HHS secretary in 2017. He is also a former congressman from Georgia.
The Health Resources and Services Administration’s February data shows that 77 million people currently live in healthcare deserts. We are on track to have a deficit of more than 187,000 physicians in the next decade — it’s clear that we need to change our trajectory.
Foreign students are an untapped pool of highly skilled professionals that can be instrumental in solving this issue. It’s time we tap them.
Despite new immigration enforcements, President Donald Trump responded with support for the immigration of highly skilled workers. These ideas are not contradictory — in fact, they go hand in hand. We need to craft new, comprehensive immigration policies that both enforce common sense border protection and adapt visas and legal pathways to citizenship to bring skilled workers to the United States. Meeting the needs of a changing America depends on it.
With more people retiring than entering the workforce each year, the labor market is experiencing widespread shortages. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 6.7 million workers will be added to the labor force over the next 10 years, compared with the 25 million workers added during a similar 10-year period during the baby boom years.
The result: Employers need more workers than the United States is producing. One report predicted that American companies will soon face the largest labor shortage in our nation’s history — and healthcare is particularly at stake.
Experts predict a 100,000 person shortfall of critical healthcare jobs over the next five years. Due to mass resignations from pandemic-related burnout and an aging population that needs more and more care, there are simply not enough American-born doctors, nurses and nurse assistants to go around, especially in America’s rural communities. Exacerbating the problem, the healthcare workforce is aging too, with 45% of active physicians over 55 and 35% expected to reach retirement age by 2030.
Legal immigration is one way to address the labor market shortfall with broad, cross-partisan approval. Already, foreign born workers account for 18% of the healthcare sector, and a recent poll found that 90% of registered voters agree that “the U.S. should make it easier for foreign doctors to remain in the U.S. if they practice in a part of the country where there are not enough doctors.”
Scaling back high-skilled immigration would mean even fewer communities with enough healthcare providers and other skilled professionals. A platform that expands upon our current framework, on the other hand, would attract the talent our country urgently needs.
Initiatives like the Conrad 30 program serve as a blueprint for targeted immigration. It bypasses federal requirements for physicians to return to their home country and allows each state to retain up to 30 foreign physicians to work in underserved areas.
Recent efforts to reform the program under the bipartisan DOCTORS Act would make it even more valuable by distributing underutilized waivers from states that don’t use them to ones with greater shortages. According to recent data analysis, the reform would allow states to retain over 100 U.S.-trained physicians in rural areas without increasing the total number of authorized waivers, while giving underserved Americans better quality care.
Similarly tailored policy solutions could fill critical needs in other professions facing labor shortages, from tech to education, skilled trades and construction. Expanding these pathways would address immediate workforce gaps as well as long-term demographic challenges.
Short-staffed sectors are not the only beneficiary of immigration; the whole U.S. economy grows when new workers contribute their productivity and purchasing power. According to a study from the Brookings Institute, a reduction in net migration “would dampen real GDP growth because it would mean a smaller labor force and thus a smaller number of people producing goods and services.” What’s more, the reduction in consumer spending would force businesses to cut back on hiring and investment.
Skilled immigration benefits everyday Americans as well as the economy as a whole. So long as we restrict it, healthcare shortages will continue, jobs will remain unfilled, needs will go unmet and economic growth will be stunted.
Enacting common sense border patrols and creating clear pathways that give us the skilled talent we need is a major investment in a healthy and prosperous future. The U.S. attracts some of the world’s most innovative minds for our world-class education — and these professionals should be able to continue to offer their skills to the American public post-graduation. Modernizing immigration policies will strengthen our workforce and, in healthcare, it will increase American’s access to quality care.
A strong immigration policy is necessary — and will require not only making illegal pathways more difficult, but encouraging the legal, skills-based pathways to citizenship that our nation needs now more than ever.
