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Chancellor Collins discusses the impact of President Trump’s immigration ban on science and medicine with Eileen Curran of NECN and Jim Brett, CEO of the New England Council. |
Chancellor Michael F. Collins is concerned that President Trump’s executive order on immigration will hinder the ability of highly accomplished medical students in the seven Muslim-majority countries named in the travel ban from securing residencies at institutions such as UMass Medical School, according to an interview on New England Cable News’ DC Dialogue.
Match Day is March 17, the day when graduating medical students taking part in the National Resident Matching Program learn where they will serve their residencies. The pool of interested applicants includes 1,000 students in the seven countries affected by the travel ban.
“This is the time of year when we begin to recruit new residents to come out to our programs and by this week, Feb. 22, the residency programs must list those applicants they want to take,” Chancellor Collins said on the Feb. 19 segment. “These are folks who have gotten a medical degree or a PhD and now they want to come and train in the greatest institutions in the world. It’s critical for us. This could be an enormous problem.”
The travel ban may prevent matching students from entering the U.S., particularly in time for the July 1 residency start date, Collins said. That would mean medical institutions would be short staffed in these key roles as they wait for the new doctors.
“If you look at the Nobel Prizes given in chemistry, physics and medicine to Americans since 2000, there have been 78; 31 of those were immigrants,” he said. “I can’t tell whether one of the next Nobel Prize winners might be in the current pool of applicants we are considering. I want us to take the finest applicants that exist.”
Learn more about how the immigration ban is affecting science and medicine in the full NECN segment:
NECN: UMass Medical and the Immigrant Ban Impact
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