Physicians stand up for colleagues, then get fired

In the Courts. By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. June 14, 2004.

They say you can't fight city hall -- or the federal government -- and win. But two North Dakota doctors took on that challenge twice.

The first time they fought for their colleagues' rights. The second time they were fighting for their own jobs.

Both times, they emerged the winners, with federal whistle-blower protections playing a key role in helping them right what they saw as two wrongs.

"We needed to stop the mistreatment of physicians, because they are the ones who want to give care to the veterans," said psychiatrist Harjinder K. Virdee, MD, who worked at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs Medical & Regional Office Center in Fargo, N.D.

Their story starts in 1999.

While at the VAMC, a cardiologist from Africa working at the facility through a H-1B visa approached Dr. Virdee after he learned that another cardiologist at the clinic was being paid more.

Dr. Virdee, along with the president of the local chapter of the National Federation of Federal Employees, Robert E. Redding, began looking into the issue.

Under H-1B visas, employers like the hospital can hire nonimmigrant alien doctors for set periods. But the law makes it clear that those employees must be paid the same as a U.S. citizen. The government does that to "protect U.S. workers' " wages by removing any potential economic incentive to hire temporary foreign workers over U.S. citizens.

Dr. Virdee said she took on the issue because she was a permanent resident in the United States and believed that H-1B visa doctors would be more likely to lose their jobs if they tried to challenge the system.