Hospitals, doctors seek exemption from $100,000 fee for H-1B visas

Hospitals and dozens of medical societies are urging the White House to allow exemptions from new $100,000 fees for H-1B visas for foreign workers.

The American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association and others are asking the White House to allow exceptions for doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers.

President Trump signed a proclamation late last month calling for a $100,000 annual fee for organizations recruiting skilled workers from other countries through the H-1B visa program. Organizations would have to pay $100,000 for each worker, far surpassing the current fee of $215, as the Associated Press reports.

The H-1B program is designed to help businesses recruit workers from other countries to fill positions that often have vacancies. Critics have said tech companies and other businesses use the program to lure talent willing to work for lower salaries, even as they lay off American workers.

Hospitals and health systems say the program is vital to bringing in doctors, nurses and other key workers at a time when most healthcare organizations are having trouble finding workers for all their vacant positions. During a time when there is a shortage of physicians, health systems say the government shouldn’t be placing more obstacles in finding doctors and other key staff.

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The American Hospital Association is urging the White House to allow exemptions for hospitals and health systems. Rick Pollack, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association, sent a letter this week to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“The AHA is concerned that the policies established by the September 19 Proclamation would undermine our hospitals’ ability to hire H1-B visa holders — including physicians, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, clinical lab experts and other health care workers — for their facilities,” Pollack said in the letter. “This constraint will be felt most by our rural and underserved communities, which already face challenges in hiring and retaining staff to serve their patients.”

In 2024, 16,937 individuals were granted H-1B visas for medicine and health occupations, and half of those were doctors and surgeons, according to federal data.

The hospital association said that the nation must do more to train American workers for careers in health care, but the group also said the H-1B program offers an important avenue to fill positions in hospitals. The hospital association points to expectations of growing shortages of doctors and nurses in the coming years.

“Foreign-trained clinicians do not displace American workers,” Pollack wrote. “Instead, they play critical roles in ensuring the health of the communities our hospitals serve. They are highly qualified and required to meet our nation’s standards for education, English fluency and state licensure.”

The American Medical Association and more than 50 other medical societies sent a joint letter to the Department of Homeland Security last week seeking exceptions for doctors in the White House proclamation on H-1B visas.

In the proclamation, the department has the ability to authorize exceptions for some professions in the national interest.

“As you establish standards to define categories of H-1B workers covered by this exception, we urge you to clarify that all physicians, including medical residents, fellows, researchers, and those working in non-clinical settings, are critical to our national interest and exempt from the Proclamation,” the medical societies wrote.

Others joining the petition include the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Surgeons, the Association of American Medical Colleges and others.

The AMA and medical societies point to projections of a physician shortage of 86,000 doctors in the next decade. They also argue that it’s a math problem.

“The U.S. does not have enough people in the younger generation to care for our aging country,” they wrote. “Accordingly, H-1B physicians play a critical role in filling this void, especially in areas of the U.S. with high-need populations.”

In 2024, about 400,000 applications for H-1B visas were approved, about twice the number granted in 2000, according to the Pew Research Center. About two-thirds of those foreign workers came to the country for computer-related jobs.

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