Immigrant doctors fill US healthcare gaps – but visa rules make life tough

Legislation before Congress would address doctor shortages by granting permanent residency to 40,000 foreign medical workers

From 2016, Rishab Gupta worked to set up a life for himself in the United States, completing his medical residency in New York before moving to Boston with his wife Vandita for a neuropsychiatry fellowship last year. But when Gupta flew home to India to care for his dying mother amid the country's devastating wave of Covid earlier this month, he knew he was leaving that life behind.

I didn't have any choice. I knew it was a risk, but I just had to," he said from his home town, Ludhiana. She fought bravely, but unfortunately that could not save her." As he grieves, Gupta is now indefinitely separated from Vandita, who stayed in Boston.