How much does a Green Card / Citizenship help for A Residency?

Curious to know how a Green card looks ? Click here :-)

Well...This post is for IMGs who do not need visa sponsorship for their residencies, to see how much your green-card / citizenship status can help you to land a residency spot.


1. In a pool of IMG applications with similar competency, Program Directors always have a preference for IMGs that DO NOT need a visa. Why ? Sponsoring a visa has its hassles for residency programs and takes time to get processed. A H1b even costs the program some $$$ per resident. H1b is even more of a hassle than a J1, since J1 is 'sponsored' by the ECFMG, while the H1b needs to be sponsored by the specific residency program. Often, a residency program must comply to the University system that it is a part of, which itself may have limits and policies to go through before a visa can be sponsored. Indeed, some programs even have strict rulings from the parent university on the number of visas they are allowed to give out each year. Do note that a green card / citizenship status for a low scores compared to visa-needing IMGs with excellent scores and highly competitive profiles is no longer too attractive to residency programs that do not mind sponsoring visas- thanks to a huge deluge of the latter. Read more about the IMG flood here.
(Some resident friends tell me that after applications have been screened, at some residency programs, the print outs of the applications are arranged in three stacks: AMGs, IMGs that do not need visas and IMGs that need Visas. Best candidates from each stack are then finalized for interviews in the same order -- don't know how much verity that has, but certainly sounds feasible...)

2. A more important advantage for GC / Citizenship holders is that there are many more residency programs that they can apply to, as compared to visa-seeking IMGs, since they are in a position to apply to programs that both sponsor & do not sponsor visas. Therefore, especially if scores are on the lower side, its a logical idea to spread your risks by making sure you apply to a good number of IMG-friendly programs that DO NOT sponsor visas - such as the Palmetto Health Internal Medicine Residency Program (Columbia, South Carolina) or the Southern Illinois University Internal Medicine Residency Program

3. Residencies that need a Prelim / Transitional year residency as a requisite (Such as PMR, Radiology, etc.) are more accessible to GC / Citizenship holders since most often, programs do not sponsor visas for a single year program.


And Sure enough in a survey study published in the Journal of American Medical Association, Following was the break up of the most common immigration / status for IMGs:

• Permanent Residents: 24.4%
• J1 Visa IMGs: 13.9%
• H1b Visa IMGs: 13.6%
• Native US Citizens: 15.5 %
• Naturalized US Citizens: 10.1%
• F1 (OPT visa): 0.4 %
• Others : you calculate...Jeez...enough spoon feeding ;-)
  

IMG-Friendly Residency Programs with Visa Sponsorship Information is being compiled at IMGfriendly.blogspot.com.

Its never too late to begin compiling your list, researching programs and contact programs near your residency to show interest in applying and then asking for observerships...is it? :-)