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ACP offers recommendations to ease impact of Trump’s travel ban
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The ACP, along with 11 other health care organizations, recently sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly urging that President Donald J. Trump’s executive order on immigration be overturned, offering recommendations to replace the travel ban with non-discriminatory policies that support families, public health and medical education, according to a press release.
In addition to the ACP, the organizations that drafted the letter included the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine, American College of Chest Physicians, American College of Physicians, American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, American Society of Hematology, American Society of Nephrology, American Thoracic Society, Infectious Diseases Society of America, Renal Physicians Association, Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, Society of Critical Care Medicine and Society of General Internal Medicine.
“We’re especially concerned that a restrictive entry of physicians and medical students from seven Muslim majority countries will undermine medical education and result in patients losing access to their doctors,” Nitin S. Damle, MD, MS, MACP, president of ACP, said in the release. “We’re pleased that the courts have currently halted implementation of the [executive order], but the underlying issues of concern about the harm caused by the [executive order] remain.”
The letter offers four joint recommendations on how the Department of Homeland Security can ensure that medical education, access to health care services and public health for individuals who otherwise meet the criteria for immigration are not negatively impacted by the executive order:
- Reinstate the Visa Interview Waiver Program, as the suspension of this program increases the risk for significant delays in new and renewal visa processing for trainees from any foreign country;
- Remove entry restrictions of physicians and medical students from the seven designated countries that have been approved for J-1, H-1B or F-1 visas;
- Allow affected physicians to obtain travel visas to visit the United States for medical conferences, as well as other medical and research related events; and
- Prioritize the admission of refugees with urgent medical needs who had already been checked and approved for entry prior to the executive order.
The medical organizations emphasized that the Department of Homeland Security should take these steps without further delay to ease some of the immediate harm caused by the executive order.
However, the organizations noted in the letter that, “even with such revisions, the executive order will still inappropriately bar immigrants and refugees based on discriminatory criteria (religion and country of origin) including family members of physicians and medical students in the U.S.”
The ACP, American Academy of Family Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America among many other professional medical organizations have previously expressed concerns on Trump’s executive order on immigration and its impact on physicians and health care. – by Alaina Tedesco
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Disclosure: Healio Internal Medicine was unable to confirm financial disclosures at the time of publication.