Congress Extends J-1 Visa Waivers for Two Years

Congress has reinstated a J-1 visa waiver program that allows international medical graduates, or IMGs, to remain in the United States for three years after completing residency training.

The legislation waives the federal requirement that -- upon completing their medical training -- IMGs must return to their home countries for at least two years before applying to re-enter the United States. Under the J-1 visa waiver program, IMGs can remain in the United States for three years after graduation if they agree to serve in medically underserved areas. The waiver program had lapsed on June 1.

J-1 visa waivers are important to ensuring primary care reaches medically underserved rural and urban areas, according to Perry Pugno, M.D., M.P.H., director of the AAFP Division of Medical Education. "The extension will help the nation's rural communities and community health centers by expanding the population of family physicians eligible to establish practices in underserved areas," he said.

The Government Accountability Office agreed in its May 18 report, "Foreign Physicians: Preliminary Findings on the Use of J-1 Visa Waivers to Practice in Underserved Areas." (PDF File: 30 pages / 713 KB. More about PDFs.).

The waiver program "remains a major means of placing physicians in underserved areas of the United States, with more than 1,000 waivers requested in each of the past three years for physicians to practice in nearly every state," the GAO report says. "In fiscal year 2005, states made more than 90 percent of these waiver requests. About 44 percent of the states’ waiver requests were for physicians to practice exclusively primary care."

The National Rural Health Association, or NRHA, agrees. Physicians with J-1 visa waivers care for more than 4 million Americans in rural underserved areas, according to a 2003 NRHA policy brief. (PDF file: 3 pages / 363 KB. More about PDFs.)

"If all IMGs currently in primary care practice were removed, one out of every five 'adequately served' non-metropolitan counties would become underserved," the paper says. "Without IMGs, the number of rural counties with no primary care physicians would rise from 161 to 212."