CNBC dispatched Sharon Epperson to explain how blocking workers from entering the country changes which workers enter the country. Hard-hitting stuff.
Restrictive immigration policies reduce the supply of foreign-trained doctors and nurses. Hospitals then hire whoever remains. The composition changes because fewer people are being let in. This is like reporting that closing seven lanes of traffic changes the composition of cars on the highway. The ones stuck in Bangladesh aren't here anymore.
The healthcare workforce was already short about 100,000 nurses before anyone decided to make the shortage worse on purpose. Brilliant policy work. Now hospitals compete for a smaller pool while patients wait longer and administrators pretend everything is fine.
Foreign-trained physicians make up roughly a quarter of all doctors in America. Restrict that pipeline and the quarter shrinks. The composition shifts toward whoever got through before the door closed. This is not economics. This is subtraction.
Retail traders will somehow find a way to lose money on this. They will buy hospital stocks because fewer doctors means higher prices means more revenue. Then they will discover that revenue does not matter when nobody can staff the f*cking emergency room. Shares will drop. They will hold through the collapse and post rockets on Twitter.
Epperson reported this like it was news. It is arithmetic. Reduce immigration and you reduce immigrants. The workforce composition changes because the workforce is smaller. Next she will report that fewer farms produce less food.
The policy works exactly as designed. Fewer foreign workers allowed in means fewer foreign workers show up. Mission accomplished. The hospitals just collapse slower now.
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