The flux of Asian immigration in the 60s, after the caps on these countries were lifted, was focused on skilled labor where there was limited US supply. AKA doctors.
We in the US still have this eye towards immigration of the skilled. While it is currently less in the medical field, it continues due to the lack of services in rural areas.
In Europe many Romanian doctors leave Romania and make much better wages in England and other countries. In India and so many other countries, many left for the US. Being a doctor had social weight and financial weight that it no longer carries here, in the US.
"'It took me double the time I thought, since I was still having to work while I was studying to pay for the visa, which was very expensive,' said Alisson Sombredero, 33, an H.I.V. specialist who came to the United States from Colombia in 2005.
"Dr. Sombredero spent three years studying for her American license exams, gathering recommendation letters and volunteering at a hospital in an unpaid position. She supported herself during that time by working as a nanny. That was followed by three years in a residency at Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif., and one year in an H.I.V. fellowship at San Francisco General Hospital. She finally finished her training this summer, eight years after she arrived in the United States and 16 years after she first enrolled in medical school.
"Dr. Sombredero was helped through the process by the Welcome Back Initiative, an organization started 12 years ago as a partnership between San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco. The organization has worked with about 4,600 physicians in its centers around the country, according to its founder, José Ramón Fernández-Peña.
"Only 118 of those doctors, he said, have successfully made it to residency.
"'If I had to even think about going through residency now, I’d shoot myself,' said Dr. Fernández-Peña, who came to the United States from Mexico in 1985 and chose not even to try treating patients once he learned what the licensing process requires."
The flux of Asian immigration in the 60s, after the caps on these countries were lifted, was focused on skilled labor where there was limited US supply. AKA doctors.
We in the US still have this eye towards immigration of the skilled. While it is currently less in the medical field, it continues due to the lack of services in rural areas.
In Europe many Romanian doctors leave Romania and make much better wages in England and other countries. In India and so many other countries, many left for the US. Being a doctor had social weight and financial weight that it no longer carries here, in the US.