President Obama Announces that White House Ready to Proceed With Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) in a month!

It was announced about an hour ago that President Obama announced from Air Force One that he was ready to proceed with CIR in a month according to Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Weisman. This announcement came as most advocates in the immigration community were darkly glum about the prospects of even getting a fill introduced in Congress this year. While the draft of the bill is still under wraps, it can be expected that most of our readers will like the bill as drafted, but may be very unhappy at the enhanced enforcement provisions that may be inserted as compromise measures. Jan Pederson, along with other J-1 and H-1B physician advocates met with many Congressmen, Senators and staff members last months to advocate the inclusion of some very important legislation for physicians and other health care workers. The provisions will bring smiles to the faces of many physicians, particularly Indian and China born physicians and we anticipate the relief will include:

• Exempting from the EB2 quota Indian physicians who agree to work in medically underserved areas, both those on H-1B and J-1 visas. This means reducing what is now a 12-15 year wait for a green card to no waiting for a quota number.
• Increasing the number of J-1 waiver slots available.
• Making the Conrad State 30 program permanent.
• Eliminating the six year limit on H-1B status for physicians who undertook graduate medical training in H-1B status provided the physician obtains an exemption from a state department of health by working in an underserved area.

The members of Congress and staffers with whom we met all strongly supported the above provisions, which are currently in a bill pending in the Senate, S. 628 (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.628). In addition, most supported S. 628 as a stand alone bill if the physician provisions become bogged down in the CIR bill.

We urge all our readers to write your Congressperson and Senators in support of the above provisions. Every voice counts. You can locate your Congressional representatives by going to http://www.congress.org and entering your home zip code. It is suggested that you fax your letters to your Member as snail mail is unreliable. As all physicians became immensely more critical to health in America with the recent passage of the Health Care Reform Act, the options of foreign medically graduates have greatly expanded as well.

Please let us know your thoughts.