Should the US create a healthcare-specific visa program?

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of articles focused on workforce issues challenging US nursing, including immigration hurdles for foreign nurses who are poised to help fill workforce gaps and the many factors narrowing the nursing pipeline domestically. Visit the series homepage, Immigration and the US Healthcare workforce, to find all the series content. 

We offer this special article series in conjunction with our inaugural CompassionIT Virtual Summit, scheduled for May 20, 2025.  Our CompassionIT initiative explores the evolving relationship between technology and compassion in healthcare, including how AI, UX design, accessibility, and clinical innovation can ease burnout and build a more humane, inclusive, and sustainable healthcare system.  The summit program includes Insights from Nursing Informaticists for CIOs on how informatics and innovation can unite to develop technologies that care for the caregivers. Also, be sure to check out all of our CompassionIT-related content.

With the US healthcare workforce crisis accelerating at the same time as the Baby Boomer generation starts to hang up its ID badges and head for retirement, the nation is in desperate need of new solutions to fill its clinical ranks. 

As discussed previously in this series, the United States has always looked outside of its borders for qualified clinical talent, and has a long history of bringing in nurses, physicians, advanced practice providers (APPs), and other highly educated healthcare professionals from locations around the world to fill gaps in what the US-born workforce can offer. 

However, immigration policy has always been a contentious topic — no more so than today, as the second Trump Administration takes a hatchet to the existing immigration infrastructure to reshape national policy. 

The impacts on the healthcare industry are likely to be profound, with more than 350,000 existing noncitizen healthcare workers at risk for deportation and an untold number of prospective applicants now concerned about whether they will be able to pursue a career in medicine in the United States.  

But the urgent need for hundreds of thousands of qualified, dedicated clinicians persists, and the US-based education and employment pipeline is simply not adequate to provide them. Thus, we must address the question of how to ensure a reliable supply of foreign-born workers despite a deeply unfavorable political climate. 

The answer may come in the form of more structured approach to bringing in workers with targeted expertise: a healthcare-specific visa program that helps to fill known gaps in the workforce and support more efficient and effective care for an aging US population. 

Why rethink the immigration pathway for healthcare workers?  

There are already a handful immigration options that are suitable for physicians, nurses, and other clinical professionals, including the J-1 visa used by many foreign national med students and physicians seeking graduate training in the US, as well as H-1B and EB-3 visas that often enable nurses to work in the country under certain circumstances. 

But none of these programs are designed for healthcare exclusively, meaning clinical hopefuls are competing with huge numbers of other applicants in other industries to secure a very limited number of spots each year.  For example, the government has set an annual cap for new H-1B visas at 85,000 (including 20,000 spots only for graduate-level degree holders), distributing them through a lottery system. More than 479,000 people applied for those 85,000 openings in just the first few months of 2025.  Typically, more than two-thirds of these visas go to tech workers each year, with applicants from India often securing over 70% of the available slots.  

Potential policy changes are also putting the squeeze on healthcare applicants and the organizations that hope to sponsor or hire them.  In 2020, the first Trump Administration proposed a rule that aimed to significantly raise the required minimum wages for HB-1 workers, in some cases doubling or tripling the prevailing market wage, regardless of the geography or skill level of those employees.  While the rule was blocked on procedural grounds at the time, the Administration’s second go-around might try to bring back similar regulations that could majorly disrupt the industry’s ability to hire otherwise qualified visa holders.  

The uncertainty and instability around whether healthcare workers can even get access to visas, let alone whether those visas offer a viable path toward a working residency, reinforces the need for better strategies to support the workforce now and in the future. 

Designing a healthcare-specific visa program that meets the nation’s needs 

The United States isn’t the only Western nation with a severe imbalance of needs and resources.  Countries like Canada and the United Kingdom are facing similar quandaries, but have taken a more direct approach to leveraging immigration programs to fill up their clinical ranks: Canada with its healthcare and social services category within the Express Entry program and the UK with a dedicated Health and Care Worker visa that allows qualified professionals to work in the National Health System (NHS) or other approved health-related organization.   

The US could take some cues from these countries by revamping some of our existing immigration strategies, as well as adding net-new immigration options, to better prioritize healthcare professionals. 

We can start by building on some of the foundations already in place. A simple way to solve part of the problem would be to carve out a healthcare-only category within the H-1B program. 

Policymakers could also consider expanding existing programs designed to fill positions in rural communities and other medically underserved areas, such as Conrad 30. 

For physicians on a J-1 visa, the Conrad 30 program offers the chance for 30 applicants per state each fiscal year to skip the typical J-1 requirement to return to their home country for two years after completing their graduate studies. Instead, they can stay in the US and move straight into a three-year commitment to working in a designated healthcare professional shortage area or medically underserved area.  

Similarly, the National Interest Waiver (NIW) for Physicians allows physicians in the EB-2 visa category to accelerate their green card applications if they commit to working full-time in a designated underserved area for a minimum of five years. 

Expanding the availability of these options for physicians, and adding categories for nurses, home health aides, APPs, and other in-demand clinical job categories, could go a long way toward ensuring that underserved areas can make up ground in terms of staffing stability. 

Policy experts might also think about visas tied to digital health and telemedicine roles, which can also help support access to care for high-needs populations in both urban and rural settings.   

A digital healthcare provider visa could enable foreign-born healthcare professionals to live in more populated regions but serve targeted communities via remote care, thereby attracting highly qualified individuals to make up massive shortfalls in mental and behavioral healthcare and endocrinology and diabetes care, or support the anticipated demand for hospital-at-home care for aging patients. 

To best support the long-term needs of US patients, new healthcare-specific visa options should include tie-ins to permanent residency, enabling applicants who commit to certain terms of service to have a better chance at securing a green card and a lifelong career in medicine in the United States. 

Essential solutions for an essential industry 

The sustainability of the healthcare industry is a matter of national importance, both from a financial and a humanitarian perspective.   

It has been well established that foreign-born healthcare workers are instrumental in supporting the healthcare ecosystem, yet our immigration policies are not doing enough to prioritize healthcare professionals.  

Over the next few years, as workforce instability continues to be a major concern for healthcare organizations, policymakers have an opportunity to better support the nation with targeted programming that supplements the existing workforce without compromising the ability of our limited number of US-born clinicians to thrive in their chosen specialties.  

A healthcare-specific visa could change that by attracting highly educated, highly motivated clinical experts from around the world to make a career and a home in the United States, serving patients in the communities that need them most. 

If the current Administration is to truly Make America Healthy Again, they’ll need to ensure the pool of qualified clinicians that interact with patients the most — nurses — is overflowing with talent, including the best the world has to offer. 

Other articles in this series

Amid healthcare workforce crisis, US immigration policies fall short

How foreign nursing schools are preparing for the U.S. market

How the nursing shortage exposes cracks in the US’s healthcare and educational systems

Jennifer Bresnick is a journalist and freelance content creator with a decade of experience in the health IT industry.  Her work has focused on leveraging innovative technology tools to create value, improve health equity, and achieve the promises of the learning health system.  She can be reached at [email protected].