Among those who will feel the impact of President Trump's revised travel ban are hundreds of doctors in Los Angeles County who come from the six majority-Muslim countries named in his executive order.
"We are concerned that ... doctors might have challenges traveling to visit loved ones or there might be physicians in one of those countries right now who might have problems getting back to this country to care for his or her patients," said Gustavo Friederichsen, Chief Executive Officer of the Los Angeles County Medical Association. Friederichsen said the ban would also make it difficult for patients in those countries seeking treatment in the U.S.
The executive order, which is due to go into effect on Thursday, temporarily blocks visas from being issued to citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen to "to protect the Nation from terrorist activities by foreign nationals." The ban does not include permanent residents and those who already have visas, but doctors applying for new visas or seeking to renew expired ones would require a waiver. Several states are challenging the order's constitutionality in court.
"Los Angeles is actually the metro area in the United States which has the highest number of doctors from the banned countries," according to Jonathan Roth, a Harvard PhD student and one of the researchers who worked on the Immigrant Doctors Project.
[For more of this story, written by George Lavender, go to http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/...y-could-be-affected/]
Comments (0)