Statement from CIR – Committee of Interns and Residents
We won’t let Trump immigration actions stop us from caring for all patients
In response President Trump’s January 25 announcement of a series of executive actions on immigration, the national resident physicians’ union, the Committee of Interns and Residents, issued the following statement:
As a union of 14,000 resident physicians, we suffer from acute repercussions of President Trump’s actions on immigration on many fronts. They are not merely matters of security and law enforcement. Their effects are wide-ranging and endanger the public’s health, the healthcare safety-net, the wellbeing of physicians who are immigrants, and the fabric of our communities.
Many of our resident physician colleagues made great sacrifices and moved to the United States to be of service to our patients and our communities. Among our members are brilliant scientists, asylum-seekers, and refugees from environmental disasters and war. These are the faces of immigration in America, and they are saving lives every day.
Each of us took an oath of service, and we are in this profession to heal the survivors of violence and trauma, and those afflicted by illness. We are committed to providing healthcare to all, and treating each patient with dignity and respect, regardless of where they come from. This is an American value and does not change with a new administration in Washington.
Those American values are at odds with President Trump’s actions. The executive actions will intensify criminalization of immigrants, pull local law enforcement into his “deportation force,” endanger safe havens, and tear communities apart. It will cause patients in dire need to shun local hospitals and clinics where a police officer is stationed out of fear for themselves or their families, turn a trip overseas for a foreign-born physician into a nightmare of uncertainty, and threaten to withdraw millions of critically-needed and properly allocated federal healthcare dollars from our cities, counties, and states.
Simply put, lives will be put at risk by these actions.
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CIR has prepared an Open Letter to the President informing him of “severe adverse effects and interruptions of care for many of our most vulnerable patients, particularly the underserved in health professional shortage areas.” The letter requests him to rescind this order. Health care students, professionals and others concerned are invited to sign the Open Letter at the following link:
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Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
I signed it.
