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Your advice might make sense if we did not have H1B workers coming in to take those jobs.

It still makes sense.

Workers with visas won't be taking all the jobs.

US doctors have been "competing" with Visa holders for jobs for three decades.

We have a lot of foreign born doctors, but we still have a lot of US born doctors.

The trick is to be creative enough to find a job in a field with decent pay and a demand for workers.

Come to think of it....that's always been the answer.

Well so far foreign birn doctors who came to the USA to practice have done so meeting American medical liscensing requirements. At present there is a case before the WTO chalenging those liscensing requirements as a non tariff barrier. The fact that the foreign born physicians met the standard has worked to keep American physicians employed. That and a demand for good medical care. However tehcurrent offshoring of radiology, and medical record keeping, the use of H1B nurses, does make that future somewhat questionable.

Further if this is the only avenue open for good paying jobs one might expect an overwhelming movement of talented students into these fields further depressing the compensation. I have not even gone into the effects of medicare regulations etc.

I've worked in medicine for 22 years as a medical transcriptionist. When I started out, in 1981, foreign doctors were sort of an anomaly. Now, there are almost as many foreign doctors as there are American doctors practicing in the U.S. And it's only taken a little over 20 years for that to happen. In fact, one hospital in particular that I worked for at one time in Southern California had almost NO American doctors on staff. They were all foreigners. A couple of hundred of them. Also, I understand that if the FTAA treaty finally gets hammered out and passed, one of the provisions being pushed for is to allow ANY medical doctor from ANY South American country to practice medicine in the U.S. without being subjected to U.S. testing and/or licensing. That is downright scary.

Also, there's a big push among some of the congressional critters (IIRC Sen. Sam Brownback in particular) to bring in foreign nurses on visas, supposedly to take care of the projected nursing shortage that is supposed to take place in the future. This will not bode well for anyone considering a career in nursing.