Court opens door to permanent resident status: Rules lifted for foreign doctors

The judges declined to rule on whether national interest waiver rules unfairly exclude physicians in certain specialties.

By Amy Lynn Sorrel, AMNews staff. July 17, 2006.

Thousands of foreign physicians will likely find it easier to live and practice in the United States after a federal appeals court overturned government regulations that limited their ability to obtain residency after working in medically underserved areas in this country.

In a 3-0 decision, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in June concluded that stricter rules immigration officials adopted in 2000 conflicted with a 1999 federal law enacted to encourage foreign doctors to practice in federally-designated communities where medical help is scarce.

Doctors said the 2000 rules undid what Congress tried to accomplish when it passed the Nursing Relief for Disadvantaged Areas Act of 1999. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was consolidated under the Dept. of Homeland Security in 2002, estimated that the act would open the door to about 8,000 foreign-born doctors annually.

The law did that by creating a fast-track national interest waiver that allows a doctor in the United States on a temporary visa, other than a J-1, to qualify for permanent resident status after working for five years in a shortage location. The requirement is three years for those who applied for the waiver before November 1998, when the statute passed.

A group of eight immigrant doctors in 2002 challenged the new rules that did not count the time they had practiced in underserved areas before applying for the waiver and limited the amount of time they had to complete their services in order to qualify for U.S. residency.