U.S. Immigration Policy on the Table at the WTO

International Relations Center ^ | November 30, 2005 | Sarah Anderson

[tertiary01]

Limit the ability of the trial lawyers to sue and the licensing agencies to dictate how doctors will medically treat patients and you will find that many doctors will come out of their premature retirements.

[Brilliant]

I think that's right... But as long as the State Medical Societies control the number of young people who can become doctors, the number of young people who enter the profession to take advantage of those higher incomes will not necessarily increase.

We need a multifaceted solution: Control the lawsuits, relax the restrictions on the number of people who can enter the profession.

And it's actually not just the physicians... The numbers of other types of health care professions are similarly manipulated.

You'd think that with the difficulty of finding a good job these days, our politicians would do something to eliminate those restrictions, but then I guess if the high cost of health care doesn't motivate, it's not surprising that the need to better jobs doesn't either.

[tertiary01]

It's also must be easier to recruit from the Philippines and provide remedial education to pass the boards than to fund Nursing Programs and schools in the US.

Everywhere I look, the old plantation mentality is alive and well.

[Brilliant]

Yeah, I think the nursing thing is an interesting one. On one hand, the hospitals are always complaining about the severe nursing shortage (not much concern from them about the doctor shortage, though). On the other hand, they pay nurses very low salaries, so you've got to ask how bad the shortage could be if they pay them these low salaries. Normally, shortages mean higher salaries.

And if there is a shortage, then why don't they bid up the salary and eliminate it?

I think that what's going on is that, yes, the hospitals want more nurses, but only if they can pay them the same low salaries that the are currently paid. They use nurses to do things that doctors used to do, so they make a lot of money on nurses, which helps to defray the high cost of paying the doctors. Add into the mix the fact that many of these hospitals are controlled by the doctors in one way or another, and it all seems to make sense.

The bottom line is that the health care industry is the most heavily regulated industry in the US, so you can't expect it to work as though it were a market-oriented industry.

[tertiary01]

In my situation it wasn't so much the wages, but the mandatory overtime and ever increasing required documentation. I was sick of trying to take care of patients or deal with violent inmates with too little sleep or while very tired. The required documentation is redundant in many cases, and the licensing agencies with their arbitrary policies are treated like gods.

[Brilliant]

And the understanding of the common man is that this is a privately run industry, so that when it fails, capitalism is somehow to blame. In reality, the industry is almost completely controlled by government in one way or another, and that is the primary reason it does not work.

[hedgetrimmer]

Thanks for the heads up. I saw an article about India the other day. The are now claiming that there should be no caps at all on US visas for Indians. Bangladesh has been hammering on this as well.

[hedgetrimmer]

where many lawmakers in both parties feel that trade negotiators have no business meddling in immigration policy.

They feel it? How about they know it because it violates their constitutional authority! Or are they just going to give it away, as they did with trade and the WTO?

[hedgetrimmer]

We have a doctor shortage. Even the AMA agrees with that, and they are the ones who are primarily responsible for causing it.

Doctors will tell you we have a doctor shortage because of "free trade". You see, in order that the "free trade" open border system will work, this country has to offer free medical care to aliens illegal or otherwise. This was codified in a law called EMTALA. EMTALA causes many emergency room and other physicians to work without pay, because the illegals don't pay for their care, and the sorely abused taxpayer can't come up with enough money to cover them. Physicians quit the profession because NO ONE in this country wants to be a SLAVE.

[hedgetrimmer]

India among top migrant exporters

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

MUMBAI: India is among the top senders of migrants in the case of Mode 4, which refers to cross-border delivery of services through the temporary movement of persons.



According to the official statistics, large number of Indian H-1B visa holders work in the information technology (IT) sector in the U.S. In 2000 and 2001, the number of H-1B beneficiaries of Indian origin was higher than the large number of new Indian immigrants accepted to the U.S.

This was revealed in a paper titled “The impact of Mode 4 Liberalization on Bilateral trade flows” released by the World Trade Organization (WTO). According to the WTO paper, “India is the most important sending country of H-1B beneficiaries. H-1B beneficiaries from India were 1,24,647 against the immigrant stocks of 10,22,552 followed by 22,570 (against 9,88,857).

Empirical research on the links between migration and trade provides substantial evidence of a link between immigration and both import and export volumes. Trade flows increase because the presence of migrants reduces transaction costs for trade with the relevant home country.

“The trade effects of migration increase with the skill level of migrants and that the trade promoting effects are greatest for newer cohorts of migrants. This indicates that it may not be necessary for migration to be permanent in order to have significantly positive effects on bilateral trade flows,” the WTO paper opine

[Brilliant]

Doctors will also tell you that we have a doctor shortage because of lawyers and insurance companies. The truth, though, is that all those things contribute to the problem, but they are not the sole cause of it. If they weren't reducing the number of students who can go to medical school, we'd have a lot more doctors.