Lobbying For Senate Bill 1979 Permanent Reauthorization of Conrad 30

On March 30, 2012, immigration attorney Barry Walker visited Congressional staffers at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. for the purpose of urging members of Congress to pass Senate Bill 1979. S. 1979 is a bill that would permanently extend the Conrad 30 program. The Conrad 30 program was passed by Congress in 1994, and it gives the States the standing to make J-1 waiver recommendations for J-1 physicians who pledge to come to medical shortage areas in the United States for three years. Our State of Mississippi is one of the States that suffers from a severe shortage of primary care and sub-specialty physicians, especially in our rural counties, where a major portion of the population lives below the U.S. poverty level. If S.1979 is passed, more foreign physicians will be encouraged to come to underserved areas. Currently, those foreign physicians who obtain graduate medical training in the U.S., as H-1B nonimmigrants, do not need a waiver of the foreign residence requirement, and so they have no incentive to serve in an underserved area in the U.S. S.1979 would provide several immigration advantages to H-1B physicians, if they agree to serve in an underserved area. They would enjoy an exemption from the H-1B numerical limitation (the H-1B cap) and they would be able to obtain classification as a first employment based immigrant (EB-1).
In our conversations with various Congressional staffers, we heard of no one who has any objection to this legislation. Hopefully it has a good chance of passage, and will likely be voted on prior to the September 30, 2012 end of the current Congressional session.