Trump’s Merit-Based Immigration Plan Good for Foreign-Born Doctors

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Washington, DC – US President Donald Trump recently announced his plan to overhaul our nation’s immigration system from the Rose Garden in the White House. His plan would favor giving immigrant visas (or green cards) to primarily employment-based applicants ahead of family-based and asylum-based ones.

I think the President’s plan makes total sense. Right now, using 2017 statistics, almost two-thirds of the green cards that are issued every year by the US government are for family-based petitions. Another 18 percent are allocated to asylum seekers and diversity visa recipients. That leaves a paltry 12 percent for employment-based applicants, who are the primary petitioners for these immigrant visas.

The current system makes no sense, and hence is readily exploited by applicants who sponsor their entire families (sometimes including second-degree relatives) at the expense of other employment -based applicants. This results in huge backlogs of decades for employment-based immigrant visas, mostly for those from highly oversubscribed countries like India and China.

Most family members who come to the US through this unfair practice of favoring family members over skilled employment-based immigrants immediately qualify for safety net services such as Social Security disability, Medicare, etc. This puts an enormous burden on our overall infrastructure and needlessly penalizes American citizens.

I am a practicing clinical psychologist who has been working in nursing homes for almost the last decade. In my daily interactions with patients and other healthcare providers, I meet many doctors who are from India and other foreign nations.

In fact, recent figures show that almost half the licensed doctors in this country are foreign-born. Many doctors from India have told me that they are still waiting to get their green cards through their employers for several years. One doctor who came to the US in the late 90s told me that she had been waiting to receive her green card for fifteen years since she applied. If President Trump’s plan was to go into effect, it would clear a lot of these artificially-created backlogs for high skilled immigrants like doctors.

I know there is no political will among Democrats and even some Republicans for implementing a merit-based and high-skill employment-based immigration plan, but it would make America more globally competitive and a viable option for physicians and other high-skilled immigrants.

Countries like the UK, Canada and Australia have had a similar merit-based immigration plan for high-skilled workers for years. Only the US is still following an antediluvian system where skilled immigrants come last in the order of preference for awarding immigrant visas. It is my hope that the Congress will take another look at the President’s plan, and not reject it outright due to petty political reasons.

Dr. Deepan Chatterjee
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Dr. Deepan Chatterjee is an award-winning Clinical Psychologist, speaker and writer based in Maryland. He has over fifteen years of experience as a licensed clinical psychologist, providing psychiatric evaluations, assessments, psychotherapy, and med consults to a wide variety of patient populations, including seniors, criminal offenders, chronic and acute patients in hospitals, families, couples, students, etc.
Dr. Chatterjee earned M.S. and Ph. D degrees in Clinical Psychology from Howard University in Washington, DC and a B.S. degree in Psychology and Mathematics from Bethany College in West Virginia. He completed his clinical internship and postdoctoral residency at Patuxent Institution, a maximum security correctional complex in Jessup, Maryland.
Dr. Chatterjee maintains professional membership in several national and international organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the Maryland Psychological Association, the Maryland Academy of Medical Psychologists, the Phi Kappa Tau International fraternity, etc. He has held positions of leadership at some time or the other in these organizations and has also been elected a Fellow of the Maryland Psychological Association.
Dr. Chatterjee has given invited talks at several institutional and academic settings, including the American Psychological Association, Maryland Psychological Association, Gallaudet University, Sheppard Pratt Hospital and Baltimore Ethical Society, among others. He is a regular contributor to several media outlets, newspapers and blogs, including The Statesman, The Telegraph, The Baltimore Sun, India Abroad, The Huffington Post, Psych Central and Altarum Institute’s Health Policy Forum, among others. His first collection of short stories and poetry titled “The First Prophetical” was published in 2013 by aois21media, for whom he also serves as a Creative.
Dr. Chatterjee has won several awards throughout his distinguished professional career, including the W.F. Kennedy Prize for Most Outstanding Student at Bethany College in West Virginia, the Hawthorne Dissertation Award for the best dissertation at Howard university in Washington, DC, the J. Franklin McMullan Fraternity Scholarship, to name just a few. He is an avid movie buff and foodie, and is a fan of craft brews and single malt tastings. to You can learn more about Dr. Chatterjee and his work by visiting his website or follow him on Twitter at @DrDeepChat007.

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