Following a recent approval of the House Judiciary Committee, the House passed a bill to reinstate and expand the Conrad 20 program for physician waivers and increase it to 30 physicians per state. The existing program expired at the end of May. Most physicians who enter the US in medical residency programs do so using J-1 visas. As part of the requirements for the J-1 visa, a physician is required to return to his or her home country or country of last residence for a period of two years prior to changing from a J-1 visa to another non-immigrant status, getting an H or L visa, or becoming a permanent resident. That requirement can be waived if an interested state health agency sponsors the doctor. Under the law that just expired, each state could sponsor up to 20 J-1 doctors per fiscal year in exchange for the doctor agreeing to work for three years or more in an underserved area.
The expiration of the State 20 program comes just after the termination of the most popular J-1 waiver program for doctors. In February, the US Department of Agriculture ended a program that had brought more than 3,000 doctors to rural America over the last eight years. The end of the State 20 program would have basically meant the end of programs that allow small, underserved communities to recruit foreign born doctors to their communities.
House bill H.R. 4858 was introduced by Rep. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and would extend the Conrad State 20 program for just two years and would expand the program to 30 doctors per state. The bill passed 407-7 and now the Senate needs to pass its own bill. Previously, a similar bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Brownback, R-KS, that would raise the number of J-1 physicians per state from 20 to 40 with no sunset provision. That bill, S. 1259, would also help to address the current severe nursing shortage by creating a category for admission of nonimmigrant alien nurses. However a new bill, S. 2674 was just introduced by Sens. Brownback and Conrad, D-ND that would expand the program to 30 physicians (instead of 40) per state per year and would be instituted on a permanent basis rather than expiring. However, the introduction of S. 2674 essentially means that Congress will not pass a nurse visa bill this year. The Senate is expected to quickly and overwhelmingly pass a bill though the question of whether the extension should be permanent or expire in two years is a point of contention.
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