New Law Limits Numbers Of Foreign Medical Students

The number of foreign medical school graduates and doctors permitted to settle and practice in the United States will be significantly reduced under a provision of the recently-enacted Health Professions Educational Assistance Act of 1976.

Details are not specified in the bill, which President Ford signed on October 12. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare will determine the exact numbers within the next year.

F. Sargeant Cheever '32, director of admissions at Harvard Medical School, described the current situation as "anomalous. There are about 8000 foreigners allowed into this country annually. We have quite enough doctors of our own to go around. I think it's a bit unfair," he said yesterday.

Martin Bander, a public affairs representative of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). said last week, "The physicians [at MGH] who do come from foreign medical schools, tend to be chosen because they are the most superbly qualified."

If the applicants selected by the hospital "are foreign medical school graduates, so be it," Bander added.

Leroy Goldman, staff director of the U.S. Senate Health Subcommittee of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, which initiated the bill, said last Friday that the provision is "a limitation on a distortion of U.S. policy over the years."

The federal government has long encouraged foreign medical school students and doctors to come to this country for training, Goldman said, but it did not anticipate that they would settle here permanently, which many have done.

Allan Fox, counsel for the subcommittee, said that a limit is necessary because "the best medical minds in the world are coming to this country. They stay for profit reasons. It is an unfair situation for other countries, particularly the third world."