About 1 in 6 U.S. hospital workers are immigrants, according to a June 17 report from KFF. Amid visa and travel restrictions on 19 countries, projections show the healthcare workforce pipeline might falter.
Here are eight things to know:
1. Immigrants account for 27% of all physicians and surgeons in U.S. hospitals, KFF reported in June. For other clinical roles, 22% of nursing assistants are immigrants, followed by 16% of registered nurses, 15% of technicians, 14% of physician assistants, and 14% of nurse practitioners and midwives.
2. Outside the clinical space, immigrants account for 29% of janitorial and maintenance workers in U.S. hospitals, according to KFF. Additionally, one-fifth of food prep and service workers, and 11% of administrative employees, are immigrants.
3. In 2022, 32% of hospitals reported hiring foreign-educated nurses, up from 16% in 2010, according to a KFF analysis of American Hospital Association annual survey data. As of 2022, approximately 500,000 immigrant nurses were working at U.S. healthcare facilities, accounting for about 1 in 6 of the nearly 3.2 million registered nurses in the country.
4. In May, the Trump administration paused visa interviews for international students to implement enhanced social media vetting. Officials said the pause lifted June 18, but uncertainty and delays have ruffled hospitals’ residency and hiring plans.
5. As of mid-June, U.S. residency programs have accepted 6,653 international physicians, but about 1,000 have not yet secured visas. Although federal officials said the application pause has been lifted, some physicians cannot schedule visa appointments because their embassies have not reopened them. Some have been told their applications need more vetting, and others were denied visas because they are from countries with a travel ban.
This leaves hundreds of physicians in “visa limbo,” according to NBC News.
6. U.S. job postings offering visa or green card sponsorship have risen nearly 285% above pre-pandemic levels, according to a July 8 report from Indeed’s Hiring Lab. The share of job listings with sponsorship benefits climbed to 0.16% in October 2024, up from 0.04% in June 2021. As of May, it stood at 0.14%.
The report analyzed Indeed job postings and job seeker profiles, with February 2020 as the pre-pandemic baseline.
7. Nearly 3 in 4 job postings with sponsorship benefits in May were in healthcare. Listings for physicians and surgeons offered visa or green card sponsorship at the highest rate — 3.2% of all postings for those roles.
Therapy (1%), dental (0.6%), pharmacy (0.5%) and software development (0.2%) were the next most common roles with sponsorship offerings.
8. Twenty percent of all U.S. job listings with sponsorship benefits were in New York. California and Illinois followed at 12.5% and 6.5%, respectively. The three states represented 4.7%, 8.7% and 3.6% of all May job postings in the U.S., respectively.
