MUMBAI: India is the top-source country when it comes to immigrant physicians and surgeons (doctors) working in the US and is the second largest source country for registered nurses. In terms of the total number of immigrant health care professionals working in the US (which includes home health aides and nursing assistants etc), India dropped to the third rank, after Philippines and Mexico.
Of the 9.87 lakh doctors in the US, nearly 26.5% or 2.62 lakh are immigrants.More Indians have moved to the US to work as physicians than any other country.New Jersey, Florida and New York were the top destination American states for immigrant doctors.
Remitly, a US based company that provides digital financial/remittance services recently released its ‘Immigrant Healthcare Index’ based on its analysis of data of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and US Bureau of Labour Statistics.
The data shows that of the 34.17 lakh actively employed registered nurses, 5.46 lakh or nearly 16% are immigrants. A significant number of 1.41 lakh Filipino registered nurses are currently working in the US, meaning that 26% of immigrant registered nurses were born in the Philippines. Indians (32,000 or 6% of the immigrant registered nurses workforce) and Nigerians (24,000 or 5% of the immigrant registered nurse workforce) ranked as the second and third most common immigrant nationalities in this profession. California, Nevada and New Jersey were the top destination American states for immigrant registered nurses.
Immigrants with a work force of nearly 2.7 crore constituted 18% of the total US health care workers. Indians with a total of 1.76 lakh health care workers comprised of 7% of the total immigrant healthcare professional population. While India was a significant source country for doctors and registered nurses, it did not figure it the top five when it came to other occupations like nursing assistants, health aides etc, resulting in an overall rank of three. Filipinos with a workforce of 3.48 lakh (or 13% of the total immigrant health care professional population) occupied the top slot, followed by Mexico, which with a work force of 2.71 lakh workers constituted 10% to the total immigrant health care professional population.