Visa Waiver Research Articles

An increasing number of states filled Conrad 30 waivers for recruiting international medical graduates.

To address physician shortages in the United States, Congress created the Conrad 30 visa waiver program allowing non-citizen international medical graduates to obtain visas to practice medicine in underserved areas. There is little information on whether states have effectively used the program. To fill the gap, we examined the growth and distribution of Conrad physicians between 2001 and 2020. We found that the number of states filling all of their annual allocated Conrad slots increased over the last two decades, yet one-half of the states still did not fill their allowed slots in 2020. Our analysis also revealed substantial variations across states in the number of Conrad physicians by specialty (eg, primary care physicians and psychiatrists), geography (eg, rural vs urban areas and physician shortage vs non-shortage areas). Our findings suggest that states can better use the Conrad program to meet healthcare needs across specialties and geographic areas.

Migration policy and the supply of foreign physicians: Evidence from the Conrad 30 waiver program

In the United States, rural and low-income communities have difficulty attracting and retaining physicians, potentially adversely impacting health outcomes. With a limited supply of physicians completing medical school at US universities, foreign-born and educated physicians provide a potential source of supply in underserved areas. Although nearly a quarter of medical residents in US hospitals received their medical degrees abroad, the terms of the commonly used J-1 visa require a return to the home country for two years, which may limit the capacity of international medical graduates (IMGs) to pursue employment in the US market. Our analysis examines the extent to which reducing visa barriers impacts the supply of physicians at state and local levels, particularly in areas designated as medically underserved. The Conrad 30 Visa Waiver program gives states the opportunity to attract foreign IMGs to practice in underserved areas by waiving the two-year home residency requirement for those with J-1 visas and providing a path to obtaining US citizenship. Changes in the federal limit on the number of waivers per state, combined with variations in the state-level restrictions on eligible specialties and geographies in which physicians can work, provide evidence of the role of visa restrictions in limiting the supply of doctors. We find that the expansion of the cap on visa waivers increased the supply of IMGs in states impacted by the cap lift. There is little evidence of reductions in US-trained doctors in states where IMGs increases were the largest, suggesting little evidence for crowding out. Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) in states with fewer restrictions on the program had relatively more IMGs but no fewer US-trained doctors. Importantly, HPSAs in states with less restriction to the program also had relatively lower early mortality rates and lower COVID-19 death rates.

Racial Discrimination in International Visa Policies

Abstract Does racial discrimination persist in global mobility rights? While many states explicitly discriminated based on race far into the twentieth century, contemporary migration policymaking is now putatively objective. The rise of white supremacist violence against all varieties of migrants, politician statements, and public support for restrictive policies calls this supposed color blindness into question. However, existing work is not discerning because most policies appear objective. In this article, I use new data on bilateral visa waiver policies from 1973 to 2013 to show that racial difference predicts whether a country receives a visa waiver, even after accounting for its economic, political, and security context. This conditional racial discrimination has worsened since 9/11. In so doing, I provide evidence of systematic racial discrimination in international visa policymaking. The results have important implications for the study of racial inequality in the international system.

Whom Do Incentive Program Physicians Serve? New Measures for Assessing Program Reach.

One approach to ameliorating health workforce maldistribution is incentivizing health professionals, including physicians, to locate in underserved areas. However, eligibility for programs typically relies on large geographic areas whereas it is subpopulations within underserved areas who are typically at risk. New measures introduced in this article capture data on the patients actually served by incentive program physicians. A pilot study of one state's J-1 Visa Waiver and loan repayment programs validated the new measures of medical need, low income, rural location, and population-to-provider ratios of provider location, providing a nuanced picture of the groups actually served by incentive program physicians.

Incentive Programs for Physicians to Practice in Underserved Areas: A Nationwide Snapshot.

Access to health care is limited in part by maldistribution of physicians. Physicians agreeing to work in underserved areas can receive a financial incentive or a visa waiver that eases immigration restrictions. However, the overall landscape and scale of incentive programs and providers remains unelucidated. This article aggregates the reported output of state and federal programs and assesses their relative contributions to increasing the physician workforce in underserved areas. The estimates derived suggest that in 2017 the National Health Service Corps supported placement of around 2000 physicians, fully state-funded financial incentive programs about 1000, and visa waiver programs over 3500.

Symposia and webinars

This past January I attended a virtual symposium hosted by the Rice Center for Quantum Materials (RCQM). The topic was iron-based superconductivity, whose discovery in 2008 ignited an explosion of experimental and theoretical activity (see Physics Today, May 2008, page 11). The symposium focused on four hot research areas: electron correlations and orbital selectivity, quantum criticality, nematicity, and electronic topology.The 17 invited experts gave their talks by sharing PowerPoint slides from their laptops or desktops via Zoom. If the symposium had been held at Rice University in real life, the talks would have been pretty much the same. Indeed, my first impression of the virtual symposium was how similar it was to the live ones I attended in the Before Times.But scrutinizing the agenda revealed some positive differences. The speakers came from seven different countries: Canada, China, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US. Such an intercontinental cast is not unusual for a big, week-long conference, such as the March meeting of the American Physical Society. For a three-day symposium without a deep-pocketed benefactor, it’s rare. What’s more, the four speakers who are based in China (and any attendees who are based in a country that does not fall under the US’s Visa Waiver Program) were spared the time-consuming, costly, and uncertain chore of applying for a US visa in person at a US consulate or embassy.Another positive difference had to do with the scheduling. RCQM divided the symposium into two daily sessions: a morning one from 10:00am to 11:30am US CST (convenient for most people in Europe and the Americas) and a night one from 8:30pm to 10:00pm (convenient for most people in South and East Asia). If all the attendees were in person, the wide gap between sessions would be unnecessary. But in a likely future of hybrid meeting, such a gap is thoughtfully accommodating.Some of the properties of the RCQM symposium are shared by Physics Today’s webinar series, which launched in August 2019 with “Vacuum Chamber Modeling for Accelerators” from science software company COMSOL. The first webinars aimed to help companies tell potential customers about their products. Then, in December 2020, nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Physics Today’s director of sales and marketing, Christina Unger Ramos, came up with the idea to host an additional type of webinars: webinars by physicists for physicists.The first editorial webinar aired this past February. The speaker, Marc Miskin of the University of Pennsylvania, expounded the micron-scale robots that he and his team make. If the topic sounds familiar, it is. Miskin wrote a Quick Study for Physics Today’s December 2020 issue. In the 40 minutes of his presentation, he could show far more graphic content—figures, movies, animations—than he could in his original two printed pages. Of the 715 people who registered, 324 watched it live.My role in the webinars is to introduce the speaker, run through some housekeeping instructions, and moderate the questions that attendees submit in writing via the webinar platform, which is provided by ON24, a San Francisco–based webcasting and virtual-event company.The questions I field are consistently interesting. Northeastern University’s Gregory Fiete gave a webinar on 1 July on the physics and applications of rare-earth elements. Attendees asked technical questions about oxidation states and chemical analogs; they also asked about recycling old devices that contain rare earths and about the prospects for extracting rare earths from the seafloor.What are the implications of the success of RCQM’s symposium and Physics Today’s webinars for the future of meetings? When I ask physicists about what they miss about in-person conferences, they always mention seeing their colleagues. Until I set out to write this editorial, I didn’t realize the literal import of their answers. It wasn’t necessarily the sessions, plenary talks, posters, and so on they missed. Rather, they wanted to talk physics again in person.Thanks to virtual technologies, one aspect of traditional conferences—the transmission of results through talks at sessions—could readily go online. And if it does, there’s no reason for physicists to convene at big downtown conference centers. What might happen is a return to the modus vivendi that Alexei Kojevnikov describes in his recent book, The Copenhagen Network: The Birth of Quantum Mechanics from a Postdoctoral Perspective (2020). In Europe in the 1920s and ’30s, physicists visited each other’s institutions. Section:ChooseTop of page <<CITING ARTICLES© 2021 American Institute of Physics.

Primary Care Shortage in Medically Underserved and Health Provider Shortage Areas: Lessons from Delaware, USA.

Objective:To examine the reasons contributing to the physician shortage in the country’s medically underserved areas using the state of Delaware as a focus state.Method:A literature review regarding the shortage of physicians with data compilation from Delaware Department of Public Health (DPH) and Delaware Health and Social services (DHSS) was performed. A review of the “Conrad 30 J1 VISA waiver program,” the most important and primary supplier of physicians to underserved areas of the state was performed. A survey interviewing the physicians recruited through this program to identify any challenges faced by them was designed and conducted.Results:The number of primary care physicians providing direct patient care in Delaware in 2018 had declined about 6% from 2013. The average wait time to see a PCP was 8.2 days in 1998 as compared to 23.5 days in 2018. Forty-six percent of physicians serving in HPSAs in Delaware are IMGs recruited through the J1 VISA waiver program. Eighty percent of these IMGs are actively considering leaving the United States due to anxieties around physician immigration policies, mainly “Immigration backlog.”Conclusion:The existing programs to recruit physicians to underserved areas seem to be inadequate. The state and the hospital systems should be able to utilize the J1 program to its full potential and focus on retaining these physicians after their assigned services. As the challenges of IMGs continue to worsen every day; the medical societies, hospitals, the state and federal government should advocate for policies that resolve these challenges.

State industrial policy in conditions European integration of Ukraine

Since the beginning of 2020, there have been crisis phenomena around the world due to the global slowdown in economic growth and the introduction of quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic. In this situation, the most vulnerable are developing countries with a small margin of safety, which, unfortunately, also applies to Ukraine, whose economy is open and highly dependent on external markets.&#x0D; Due to the slowdown in the growth of the global economy, the situation in one of the main export industries of Ukraine – industry is deteriorating first of all. The European Union has become one of the important export markets for Ukraine’s industrial products in recent years, which has raised the issue of shaping a relevant state industrial policy in today’s challenging environment. The purpose of the article is to determine the directions of formation and implementation of state industrial policy in the conditions of European integration of Ukraine in modern conditions. In 2020, due to the economic crisis and the pandemic of the coronavirus, the Ukrainian industry may lose even more due to low demand for ferrous metals in world markets, including in EU countries.&#x0D; The Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products is a way of eliminating technical barriers to trade between Ukraine and the EU. The Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products is a type of mutual recognition agreement that requires a partner country to align its legislation, practices and infrastructure with EU rules.It is envisaged that in the sectors covered by this Agreement, Ukrainian exporters will be able to label their products with the CE mark and to sell them freely on the EU market without additional EU certification. Potentially, the Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products could cover up to a fifth of Ukraine’s exports to the EU, notably mechanical engineering products. The formation and implementation of state industrial policy in the conditions of European integration of Ukraine should take place using the following algorithm:1. Study of the new EU Regulation 2019/1020 of 20.06.2019 on market surveillance and conformity of products and elaboration of relevant amendments to the legislation of Ukraine.2. Concentration of the function of legal coordination of draft regulatory acts (including technical regulations) aimed at implementing the Association Agreement and preparation for the Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products in one state instance, equipped with specialized personnel with adequate knowledge of EU law and languages.3. Strengthening the requirements for the accreditation and oversight process for accredited bodies, as well as the process of designating and monitoring conformity assessment bodies to ensure that their technical competence is adequate and to prevent fraud and the use of fraudulent practices.4. In the absence of a rapid prospect of concluding an Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products, the harmonization of procedures and requirements that are too burdensome for exporters and importers, first and foremost.5. Paying particular attention to capacity building of state market surveillance authorities.6. Raising awareness of business entities and enhancing the role of business associations in raising such awareness.7. Increasing the EU’s interest in providing Ukraine with effective technical assistance for the development of legislation and the proper functioning of quality infrastructure and market surveillance authorities.&#x0D; &#x0D; Introduce the position of Deputy Prime Minister for Industry and launch support programs for the real economy.&#x0D; &#x0D; Thus, Ukraine’s further integration with the European Union is largely linked to the formulation and implementation of relevant industrial policy, which should be to continue reforming all sectors of the economy, in particular, to modernize the industrial complex. And the signing of the Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products in the three priority sectors («industrial visa waiver») in the medium term should become one of the main foreign economic priorities of Ukraine’s European integration in the face of the current challenges of today.

A Divergent Path: Korean American Politics in an Age of Globalization

In a globalizing world, Korean Americans political participation is being increasingly shaped not only by their demand for empowerment in the United States―the nation of their citizenship―but also by their desire to manage their increasingly transnational lives and to fully maximize economic opportunities on the other side of the Pacific. While finding meaningful political power in the diverse and contentious American society has been a slow process, Korean Americans have found much more success in the interstitial political space of globalization and transnationalism. Within the past two decades, Korean Americans have been wooed by the South Korean government and the U.S. Departments of State and Commerce for various political and policy objectives. More specifically, this paper examines three specific laws and policies that demonstrate this transpacific turn in Korean American politics: 1) Overseas Korean Act (1999); 2) Visa Waiver Program (2008); and 3) Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (2012). This shift in the political orientation of Korean Americans signals the increasing importance of transnational dynamics in ethnic political incorporation.

The rise of a new tourism destination: How did Vladivostok become the closest Europe for Korean tourists?

The purpose of this study was to investigate the emergence of Vladivostok, Russia, as a new tourism destination for Koreans from the perspective of a social construction of space. This study analyzed the process using two axes, one representing the discourse of development as a pull factor and the other representing the discourse of a region as a push factor. Vladivostok established a physical and institutional foundation to evolve into a new destination through investments by the Russian Far East development project beginning in the mid-2000s. Also pivotal were two bilateral agreements between Korea and Russia: the Open Skies Agreement (2012) and the Visa Waiver Agreement (2014). Vladivostok, with these practices, was advertised as a tourism destination through Korean travel agencies that realized the area’s potential after those changes. The promoted image of Vladivostok as “the closest European city to Korea” was reinforced socially through frequent exposure on reality television programs. By satisfying the expectations of tourists seeking new and unique places to visit, Vladivostok became a popular destination. This is how a place that was once perceived negatively develops a new image through changes in policy, institutional practices, and a revised sociocultural gaze, thereby revealing that the destination is socially constructed.

신남방정책을 위한 對아세안 일반여권 사증면제의 안보위협 분석

신남방정책을 위한 對아세안 일반여권 사증면제의 안보위협 분석

The Implications of the Current Visa System for Foreign Medical Graduates During and After Graduate Medical Education Training.

The current and projected deficit in the physician workforce in the US is a challenge for primary care and specialty medical settings. Foreign medical graduates (FMGs) represent an important component of the US graduate medical education (GME) training pathway and can help to address the US physician workforce deficit. Availability of FMGs is particularly important to the internal medicine community, as recent data demonstrate that internal medicine is the specialty with the highest number of FMGs. System-based and logistical inefficiencies in the current US visa system represent significant obstacles to FMG trainees and have important psychological, emotional, and logistical consequences to FMG engagement and participation in US GME training and in the post-training workforce. In this article, we review the contemporary structure, process, and challenges of obtaining a visa for GME training. The H1B and J1 visa programs are compared and contrasted, with an emphasis on logistical specifics for FMG GME trainees and training programs. The process of and options for J1 visa waivers are reviewed. These considerations are specifically reviewed in the context of recent policy decisions by the Trump administration, with emphasis on the effects of these decisions on FMGs in medical training and practice.

외국인 관광객 유치를 위한 제주 무사증제도 효과 분석 및 정책적 시사점

외국인 관광객 유치를 위한 제주 무사증제도 효과 분석 및 정책적 시사점

외국인 관광객 유치를 위한 제주 무사증제도 효과 분석 및 정책적 시사점

외국인 관광객 유치를 위한 제주 무사증제도 효과 분석 및 정책적 시사점

The EU–Turkey Visa Liberalisation Agreement: A Victim of Populist and Securitisation Practices?

The negotiation process of the visa liberalisation between Turkey and the European Union came to a sudden halt in May 2016 when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated that Turkey would not amend its anti-terrorism law as a precondition for the visa waiver deal. Going beyond the approach of general policy analyses, the paper draws inspiration from the postmodern or interpretive–discursive political tradition, and proposes discourse analysis, populism and securitisation theories as a theoretical background for finding an explanation to this abrupt move. As the author examines the visa liberalisation discourse in Turkey at the official level from May 2016 to April 2017, she points out how the government’s framing connects with the wider securitisation discourse of the previous years and shows what makes it extremely difficult to challenge or counter the official narrative(s).

CONTENTIOUS REGULATION OF FAMILY LEGAL RELATIONS IN PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW: WAYS FOR MANAGEMENT OF CONFLICTS

Purpose: the article deals with the problem of conflict regulation of family legal relations at the international level, which is conditioned by various religious, national, socio-economic and everyday features that play a significant role in the formation of acts of national legislation, in particular family law. Methods of research: used methods of analysis, comparison and synthesis. Results: a series of measures to resolve the conflict conflict between family law is proposed. The rapid pace to European integration, the signing of the visa waiver agreement with Ukraine on the 17th of May 2017, has led to a rapid increase of the number of foreign citizens on the territory of Ukraine, in particular, the increasing of the number of families with different nationalities. The military conflict, the economic crisis in Ukraine has forced many young Ukrainians to go abroad in a search of a better life and work. That is why, as a consequence, cases of creation of a family with persons of different nationality, both in the territory of our state, both, and abroad became more frequent. The urgency of this problem in modern life, adds also the fact that the cases of the presence of foreign influence on the private life of Ukrainians increases, and the legislative regulatory framework is practically unchanged. In addition, an important way to solve this problem is to correct the regulation of international law timely, in relation to all institutions of public administration.

THE VISA EXEMPTION POLICY IMPLEMENTATION ON GLOBAL MOBILITY: A STRATEGY TO MINIMISING THE RISKS AND MAXIMISING THE BENEFITS OF VISA POLICIES

&#x0D; &#x0D; To secure Indonesian borders and uphold state’s sovereignty, the Directorate General of Immigration (Imigrasi) must develop an effective monitoring strategy. Managing people’s mobility within the Indonesian territory should also be the main concern of the current government amidst the implementation of the visa waiver policy. This means that the economic benefit expected from the free-visa policy must not undermine the national security. In particular, this study argues that the visa exemption policy is not related to the rise of immigration violations and, therefore, the level of immigration offense is influenced by other factors including poor management and scrutiny of foreign arrivals. This paper will analyse secondary data to deeply understand what challenges faced by Imigrasi during the implementation of President Regulation No. 21 of 2016 about the visa waiver for 169 countries. The data was originally obtained through interviews, surveys, research, and reports published by academic researchers or government/non-government agencies. This method is utilised as a means to gather all relevant information related to the topic discussion, especially, in finding the urgency for reform and adjusting Imigrasi’s policy direction. The result conveys that visa exemption regulation needs to be reviewed immediately.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

STRATEGIES TO INCREASE THE NON-TAX REVENUE OF IMMIGRATION SUBJECT TO THE PRESIDENTIAL DECREE NO.21 OF 2016 ON VISA WAIVER PROGRAM

&#x0D; &#x0D; This paper discusses the phenomena of Visa Waiver Program policy under the Presidential Regulation No. 21 of 2016 on Free Visa Policy in which there are 169 countries being exempted from obtaining a visa to enter the Indonesian territory. Since then, this policy affects a significant decrease of the non-tax revenue of Immigration which might cause the programs and immigration policy getting fewer. The purpose is to set up recommended strategies to raise the number of non-tax revenue of immigration and as a reference and recommendation for Directorate General of Immigration (DGI). The result shows that there are three steps and strategies in an effort to make the non-tax revenue of immigration higher: increasing the fee of the existing non-tax revenue, regulating the discrimination of fee (user charges) of the non-tax revenue, and adding categories of non-tax revenue of immigration.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

The Changing U.S. Immigration Policy on the Nexus of Security and Economy: Extending Visa-Waiver Program and Advocacy-Coalition Framework

ABSTRACTBy examining the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) in the case of the U.S. Visa Waiver Program (VWP), this article suggests that a dynamic foreign policy change on immigration issues is a function of trade-off between economy and security. In other words, when policy makers ensure that economic gains can offset security loss and vice versa, policy change in immigration issues is rapidly made. Two polarizing advocacy coalitions, security-concerned and economy-concerned, exist within the policy subsystem on the VWP and each coalition has different belief systems, policy actors and stakeholders.

Wpływ czynników politycznych i prawnych w Stanach Zjednoczonych na procesy migracji i aktywność turystyczną amerykańskiej Polonii

Stany Zjednoczone mają długą historię związaną z imigracją, co odzwierciedla się w ustawodawstwie tego państwa. Prawo stanowi główny instrument polityki imigracyjnej. Polska jest jednym z czterech krajów UE, oprócz Bułgarii, Rumunii i Cypru, które nadal znajdują się poza Visa Waiver Program (VWP). Wejście do VWP daje prawo przyjazdu do USA bez wizy na okres do 90 dni. Zmiany, które nastąpiły w prawie imigracyjnym w ostatnich latach, mogą mieć znaczenie dla sytuacji pewnej liczby Polaków i osób polskiego pochodzenia w USA. Wejście w życie ustawy Immigration and Reform Act (tzw. Dream Act), czyli amnestii dla osób, które jako dzieci nielegalnie przybyły do Stanów Zjednoczonych pod opieką rodziców, jak również umorzenie postępowań deportacyjnych przeciw osobom, które nie są przestępcami i których sprawy nie zaliczają się do priorytetowych, dają szansę nielegalnym imigrantom na uregulowanie ich statusu. Głównym celem artykułu jest przedstawienie czynników politycznych i prawnych, które warunkują aktywność chicagowskiej Polonii i jej wybór destynacji turystycznej. Jednym z ważniejszych czynników, który przyczynia się do aktywności turystycznej amerykańskiej Polonii, jest uregulowana prawnie sytuacja pobytowa. W artykule zaprezentowana zostanie metoda sondażu diagnostycznego w postaci badań ankietowych wśród Polonii w liczbie 1014 w języku polskim i angielskim. Zostaną przedstawione wyniki mówiące o tym, że: status pobytowy respondentów w USA nie wpływa na częstotliwość wyjazdów w ciągu roku, osoby przebywające w USA legalnie poświęcają więcej czasu na wypoczynek w ciągu roku niż osoby przebywające w USA nielegalnie, osoby przebywające w USA legalnie wydają w ciągu roku większą sumę pieniędzy na podróże niż osoby przebywające w USA nielegalnie, uregulowany status pobytowy Polonii wpływa na wybór kierunku wyjazdu również wewnątrz kraju.