Immigrant physicians have quietly supported healthcare in underserved portions of urban and rural America for about six decades amid the rise of government-sponsored medical programs and a nationwide shortage of primary care providers.
And they have not always been welcomed.
Eram Alam chronicled their story in her 2025 book, “The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed U.S. Healthcare.” The associate professor in the history of medicine detailed her findings as part of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs’ fifth annual International Book Blitz on Monday.
Starting in the 1960s, she said, professionals from foreign countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, were recruited to work in the U.S.
“Lawmakers feared that these emergent post-colonial Asian and African nations would get seduced by the communist sphere of influence instead of joining the United States,” she said.
