The Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety of the Senate Judiciary Committee held a September 14 hearing entitled, “Flatlining Care: Why Immigrants Are Crucial to Bolstering Our Health Care Workforce.”

The hearing, “Flatlining Care: Why Immigrants Are Crucial to Bolstering Our Health Care Workforce,” held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety elevated the LeadingAge’s solutions to the aging services workforce crisis.

LeadingAge has called on Congress and the White House to support a wide range of workforce-related initiatives for aging services, including immigration reform, which are highlighted in our LeadingAge Aging Services Workforce Now! campaign. LeadingAge supports enactment of a temporary guest worker program for aging services providers and improving the process for allowing registered nurses to permanently enter the U.S. Additionally, we ask Congress to pass the Health Care Workforce Resilience Act (S. 1024, H.R. 2255), to speed up the ability of foreign nurses and doctors to come to the United States and start working by utilizing unused visas.

Hearing witnesses included Dr. Ram Alur, an internal medicine physician, who shared his experience as an immigrant physician in the United States, who utilized the J-1 visa exchange program to practice medicine beyond his training in the United States. Sarah K. Peterson, an attorney whose practice exclusively focuses on employment-based immigration, provided testimony on how she has represented health care systems, and helped foreign national physicians as they navigate through the U.S. immigration system. Dr. Alur and Ms. Peterson’s testimony also addressed how Congress can enact immigration reform that would allow International Medical Graduates (IMGs), international nurses and other healthcare professionals to help address this country’s ongoing shortage of access to medical care, ensuring that all Americans are able to access health care. Urbino “Benny” Martinez, Brooks County Texas Sheriff, provided testimony on how the border crisis is the result of not securing the border and the gravity of undocumented apprehensions in Brooks County in South Texas.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin (D-IL), and the Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety Subcommittee Chairman Alex Padilla (D-CA), along with the Democratic members on the Subcommittee highlighted the importance of immediately enacting bipartisan legislation that would build up our foreign health care workforce. While the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), ranking subcommittee member John Cornyn (R-TX), and the Republican Subcommittee members used the hearing as an opportunity to highlight the importance of simultaneously addressing the border crisis, and the gravity of people at the border seeking asylum.

Chairman Durbin and Padilla highlighted the Conrad State 30 and Physician Access Reauthorization Act (S. 1810, H.R. 3541), a bipartisan bill sponsored by subcommittee member, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Susan Collins (R-ME) as a solution. This bill extends the J-1 visa exchange waiver, limited to IMGs, to be expanded beyond 30 slots per state, if certain thresholds are met. A version of the bill was included as an amendment in the comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate in 2013.

The hearing helped to build support for the bipartisan proposal, The Health Care Workforce Resilience Act which recaptures 40,000 immigrant visas for professional nurses and physicians. The bill would allow the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to recapture the entry of 25,000 immigrant nurses and 15,000 immigrant visas for physicians. The proposal would also recapture immigrant visas for the families of these medical professionals.

Overall, the hearing shed light on the growing crisis and critical shortage of health care clinicians, and the opportunity to address these challenges to ensure access to basic medical care could continue, especially in rural and underserved areas.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Chairman Padilla emphasized the Subcommittee’s agreement that the asylum process is in need of reform. Most importantly, he agreed there are opportunities for Congress to make reforms that improve legal migration pathways, allow J-1 visa exchange physicians an opportunity to remain in the country after their training, and recapture unused visas from previous years to help address our health profession shortage in America.

You can see a webcast of the hearing here.

LeadingAge is submitting testimony for the hearing record.