Physicians and nurses from 19 countries covered by a December 2025 US immigration ban represent a small but geographically concentrated share of the U.S. clinical workforce — and the communities where they practice are disproportionately already struggling to find enough primary care providers, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.
Researchers analyzed Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development data from 2010 to 2023 for physicians and 2010 to 2022 for nurses to identify licensed, actively practicing foreign-trained clinicians from all 19 nations affected by the ban. County-level analysis drew on data from the American Community Survey, the Area Health Resources File, and the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index.
Here are six takeaways from the report:
1. In 2023, clinicians from the 19 affected countries accounted for 23,745 of roughly 1.1 million US physicians and 56,332 of nearly 4 million US nurses.
2. Physician inflow from the banned countries rose from 350 in 2010 to 459 in 2023, representing about 2.5% of total physician inflow that year. Nurse inflow climbed from 189 in 2010 to 368 in 2022, accounting for roughly 1% of all nurse inflow.
3. Iran, Venezuela and Cuba contributed the largest numbers of emigrating physicians during the study period, with 1,772, 918 and 807 physicians, respectively. For nurses, Cuba, Haiti and Iran led, contributing 1,312, 665 and 486, respectively.
4. These clinicians are concentrated in a small number of U.S. counties. Of 3,097 counties analyzed, just 203 had at least one physician from a banned country and 222 had at least one nurse from a banned country. In those counties, nurses from banned nations accounted for 14.14% of all nurses — a markedly higher concentration than physicians from those countries, who made up 1.58% of all physicians in their respective counties.
5. Counties with at least one physician from a banned country had 2.4 times the odds of being designated a primary care Health Professional Shortage Area compared with counties that had none. Counties with at least one nurse from a banned country had 1.7 times the odds of that designation. Counties with clinicians from banned nations were also more likely to have higher proportions of Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black residents, lower high school graduation rates, and be located in the Midwest, South and West.
6. “Our findings suggest that the recent complete immigration ban could reduce the physician and nurse workforce in the [United States] and worsen access to care across already underserved communities,” wrote lead study author Tarun Ramesh, MD, of the Department of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, in the study.
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