Think Immigration: I Wish People Understood that the U.S. Healthcare System Depends on Immigrants

We asked the members of the 2023-24 AILA Media Advocacy Committee to share the one thing they wished people understood about immigration. We present their insights in this blog post series.

Unless you or a loved one faced a major health crisis, the role of immigrants in the healthcare field will be overlooked. Currently, one in five physicians are immigrants. In some disciplines, immigrants make up 50% of the active physicians (examples: geriatric medicine and nephrology) and in rural communities, immigrant physicians may be the only primary care providers in the area. Said differently, immigrant doctors are filling the gaps where U.S. doctors will not practice or may face staffing shortages.

And it’s also not just doctors. Immigrant nurses compose 16% of the workforce. Filipino nurses make up 4% of registered nurses yet accounted for 25% of COVID deaths among registered nurses. Immigrants are not just at the frontlines, often they are also there with our aging parents, our bed-ridden relatives, or those who need in-home care. Immigrants compose 25% of the health aid workforce. As care needs from Baby Boomers increase and Gen X ages, these physically demanding roles will be harder to fill without immigrants.

Hospitals also employ immigrants to clean rooms, work in nutrition services, serve as interpreters, and an array of many other jobs. Immigrants are widely employed in the Healthcare and Social Assistance Industry, accounting for 3.56 million people in 2021. During the worst of the pandemic, interactions with immigrant staff may have been the only positive interactions many hospital patients encountered (since visitation was suspended).

Despite the vital role of immigrant healthcare workers, our immigration system is not flexible or even accessible for many. It is simply not designed to help us build the healthcare workforce we need, especially in medically underserved communities. For many healthcare occupations, there is no “easy path” to a green card and our annual quota has not changed since 1991. If there is a path, there is nothing to fast-track it, so immigrants working in healthcare fields face years-long waits if they are even eligible. As a nation, immigration modernization is desperately needed to address staffing issues, retirements in the healthcare space, and for the United States to retain highly skilled professionals.

We hope you enjoyed this post on Think Immigration! We’re always looking for fresh perspectives and voices to join our community of contributors. If you’re an AILA member passionate about immigration and have insights, stories, or expertise to share, we invite you to write for us. Visit our FAQs to learn more about how you can contribute to the conversation and make sure you bookmark our Think Immigration page so you don’t miss any blog posts.