Someone I know (NOT I) just got engaged to someone from Ireland (again, not me) who is an MD there. They’ve known each other for a VERY short time, so I’m a little suspicious. I hear doctors in the UK don’t make that much money, so I’m concerned this MD may be entering the marriage to be able to come to the US as a permanent legal resident and to be able to practice medicine here. I know that to practice here, a doctor has to pass licensing tests (and read the particulars on Wikipedia), and that requirements to practice vary by state, but generally speaking, is there a waiting period or a probationary stage before you get fully licensed? Do years of experience in your birth country count?
I’m also wondering about residency. If you marry a US citizen and then divorce that person, are you automatically no longer a legal resident of the US, or does it depend? Does it matter how long after the marriage the divorce occurs? And would an MD be more likely to be allowed to stay in the US than someone who’s, say, a plumber or a taxi driver?
They’d have to sit their USMLEs, maybe their boards, and their local licensing exams, and get into a residency programme.
The average Dr in Ireland is making over $60K a year.
Lots of Irish Drs got to the US for a few years (laughingly called their BTA- been to America-qualification) to get broader experience.
The earlier you go in your training, the better, because the US will make foreign Dr jump through all the hoops of a new graduate from a US programme.
The USA will consider Drs from English speaking countries as highly skilled labour in a field which requires more workers. An Irish Dr will have comparable education and training to a US graduate- and the immigration folks realise this.
There actually won’t be much incentive to marry the American in this scenario- many, many Irish and British Drs get green cards on the basis of what they can bring to the US in terms of useful skills.
Egad! Sorry for including Ireland in the UK! What was I thinking?:o
[QUOTE=irishgirl;14366765 The USA will consider Drs from English speaking countries as highly skilled labour in a field which requires more workers. An Irish Dr will have comparable education and training to a US graduate- and the immigration folks realise this.
There actually won’t be much incentive to marry the American in this scenario- many, many Irish and British Drs get green cards on the basis of what they can bring to the US in terms of useful skills.[/QUOTE]
So there is a crying need for more doctors in the US–or does it depend on the specialty?
This is someone who’s been practicing medicine in Ireland for many years, not someone just out of training. So she’d have to do another residency?
These are people who met on the Internet and got engaged only a few days after meeting IRL–hence my suspicion.
Here’s the basic scoop on petitioning for a relative to immigrate to the U.S. The short version: somene who is granted U.S. permanent residence based on a marriage of less than two years’ duration to a U.S. citizen will be granted conditional permanent residence, which expires two years from the date it is granted. In that case, within the 90 days before th person’s conditional residency expires, he/she needs to file a Petition to Remove the Conditions on Residency. He will need to show that the marriage is still intact, or that if the marriage has ended in divorce, that the marriage was not entered into for the purpose of evading U.S. immigration laws.
So yes, he will need to show that the marriage is legitimate at least twice. It’s possible to be divorced by the end of the two-year initial residency period and still keep one’s U.S. permanent residence, but such applications are adjudicated with a healthy degree of skepticism. And of course, getting to the U.S. as a permanent resident doesn’t grant anyone the right to practice medicine here, but then you seem to already know that.
My knowledge is a bit rusty (I used to deal with, among many others, Soviet doctors trying to be relicensed in the U.S. in the early 90s), but I believe this is still very much the case. Very few of the Soviet doctors my office helped ever managed to pass their boards and match to a residency, but of course many of them were long out of school and their training was rather diffferent than the U.S. standard, and many of them didn’t have very good English. I think only 1 - 2% made it in the end.
A friend got a job working as a Dr on for a cruise ship, on the transatlantic/ Caribbean routes.
As part of the work will be in US water he had to get a US visa. This included a visit at the US Embassy in Dublin for an identity check and general suss-out.
He waited several hours in a corridor, with other visa applicants, and watched as they were lead away to be interviewed, often for some time.
He told me his interview went something like:
“Is this your passport?”
“Yes.”
" Are you a Dr, and is this your documentation proving it?"
“Yes”
" Are there any sanctions on your practice in the UK or Ireland or USA?"
“No.”
“Enjoy your new job”.
Yes, there’s a crying need. Specifically, general practictioners and “primary care physicians” are in short supply (many doctors in the U.S. choose to specialize, as the money is better), but any specialty which works with older patients is also likely to be in high demand.
This MD would be moving to a remote rural area in the western US. The hospitals are small, and I have never heard of anyone doing a residency here. Dumb question alert: would this MD have to do a residency at a major hospital or a teaching hospital?
The USA is one of the least attractive places for me to emigrate to, as a doctor working in Europe.
Europeans have rights to freely move between member states, so one can work anywhere in the EU.
Working in Australia and New Zealand doesn’t require re-training or residency, and the jobs there often have more attractive salaries than the UK and Ireland.
For a consultant (attending) specialist doctor with a private practice in the UK or Ireland, working in the USA would mean:
This is interesting. A friend whose husband and parents-in-law are legal US residents from Britain just e-mailed me. Her FIL is a physician. The whole family moved to the US years ago, then moved back to Britain, but eventually returned permanently to the US because doctors in the UK (she says) “don’t make anything like what US doctors make.” So it was attractive to that family. It does sound like a hassle, though.
We have a friend whose son married a Russian doctor, though I think she got her MD in Hungary. Getting licensed in the US was so difficult she never even tried.
Soon after they got divorced (his fault.) She was able to prove the marriage was not one of convenience through showing correspondence and visits from him long before they got married, and that he abandoned her, and she got to stay with very little trouble.
Actually, according to Average Doctor Salary in United States for 2023
the average salary for physicians in the US is more than twice as high as salaries in the UK. (Ireland is not listed, but I assume it would be roughly similar to UK salaries). The average gross salary for US physicians is $11,698 per month ($140, 376 per year), with a 30% tax rate. The average gross salary for UK physicians is $5, 106 per month ($61,272 per year) with a 35% tax rate.
It sounds like there would in fact be a significant financial incentive to practice in the US.
I’m sure it is possible to earn more as a doc in the US eventually, but they’re not exactly starving in the streets here (in the UK, that is, but I can’t imagine Ireland is all that different.) Couple that with the fact that there do appear to be legal opportunities for physicians to move to the US if that’s what they want to do, opportunities that don’t involve criminal visa fraud, and I’d say that a marriage scam doesn’t seem all that likely here.
Of course, it could happen, and it’s always wise to be cautious about these things, I guess.
