Suspicious climate forces registration of foreign doctors

Male physicians who come from designated, predominantly Muslim, countries and who are in the United States on temporary visas fall into the government's dragnet.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. May 12, 2003.

The crowd protesting outside the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in northern California invited Khurram Durrani, MD, to join them, but exercising his right to free speech wasn't a priority. He was headed to a meeting with his attorney and then into the INS office to register.

A native of Pakistan with a temporary visa, Dr. Durrani had to prove he was in the United States legally or risk deportation.

Nearly 130,000 men, and a handful of women, have been questioned, photographed and fingerprinted by immigration officials since December 2002. The registration deadline for those with visas to visit or to work and study for a limited time in the United States was April 25.

Physicians from other countries expect to face language and cultural challenges when they come to the United States to practice, but they come anyway -- drawn by this country's open society and economy. Being singled out by the U.S. government based on their countries of origin is not something they envisioned. And for many, it felt like a slap in the face.

"For the first time in my seven years in the United States, I felt like a second-class citizen," Dr. Durrani said.

Dr. Durrani, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in northern California, was fearful that speaking to AMNews about his experience would jeopardize his green card application.

"They asked me for my credit card. I wasn't expecting that; my personal e-mail address, my parents' names and birth dates," he said. "I don't know if my e-mail is being checked or if my phone is being tapped, but it makes you uneasy. Why are they asking for this information and what are they going to do with it?"