Physicians and nurses from 19 countries affected by a December 2025 US immigration ban accounted for 23,745 physicians and 56,332 nurses in the US workforce in 2023, according to a cross-sectional study.
Investigators analyzed Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development data from 2010 to 2023 for physicians and 2010 to 2022 for nurses to identify licensed and actively practicing foreign-trained clinicians from the 19 banned countries. County-level analyses incorporated 2018 to 2023 data from the American Community Survey, Area Health Resources File, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Social Vulnerability Index. The investigators evaluated annual physician and nurse inflow from banned countries into the United States and estimated the associations between county-level characteristics and having at least one physician or nurse from a banned country.
The number of physicians entering the United States from banned countries increased from 350 in 2010 to 459 in 2023, representing about 2.5% of physician inflow in 2023. Nurse inflow from banned countries rose from 189 in 2010 to 368 in 2022, accounting for approximately 1% of total nurse inflow in 2022.
Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba contributed the largest numbers of emigrating physicians during the study period, with 1,772, 918, and 807 physicians, respectively. Cuba, Haiti, and Iran contributed the largest numbers of nurses, with 1,312, 665, and 486 nurses, respectively.
In 2023, physicians from banned countries accounted for 23,745 of about 1.1 million US physicians, while nurses from banned countries accounted for 56,332 of nearly 4 million US nurses.
Among the 3,097 counties analyzed, 203 of them had at least one physician from a banned country and 222 had at least one nurse from a banned country. Among counties with at least one physician and those with at least one nurse from banned countries, physicians accounted for 1.58% of all physicians and nurses accounted for 14.14% of all nurses.
Counties with at least one physician from a banned country had 2.4 times the odds of being designated a primary care Health Professional Shortage Area compared with counties without such physicians. Counties with at least one nurse from a banned country had 1.7 times the odds of being designated a primary care Health Professional Shortage Area.
The investigators also found that counties with at least one physician or nurse from a banned country were more likely to have higher proportions of Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black residents; lower rates of high school graduation; and be located in the Midwest, South, and West.
The study could not determine immigration status, physician specialty, or whether all clinicians who immigrated to the United States ultimately practiced clinically in the country. They also stated that the analysis could not evaluate potential causal effects of the immigration ban.
“Our findings suggest that the recent complete immigration ban could reduce the physician and nurse workforce in the [United States] and worsen access to care across already underserved communities,” wrote lead study author Tarun Ramesh, MD, of the Department of Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital as well as the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, and colleagues.
This study was supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the National Institute of Nursing Research. Senior study author Hao Yu, PhD, reported receiving grants from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the National Institute of Mental Health outside the submitted work. The study authors reported no other conflicts of interest.
Source: JAMA Network Open