ASE Joins Letter to DHS Opposing Fee on H-1B Physician Visas

On September 23, ASE joined more than 40 national physician, medical specialty, and health care organizations in a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin and USCIS Director Joseph Edlow opposing a proposed $103,265 fee on cap-subject H-1B petitions. The letter urges DHS to instead recognize physicians and dentists as serving a permanent national medical interest and to establish a standing exemption from H-1B fees and restrictions regardless of cap status, noting that international medical graduates make up nearly a quarter of practicing U.S. physicians and disproportionately serve rural, underserved, and high-poverty communities already facing acute workforce shortages.

This letter is squarely in line with ASE’s standing workforce advocacy priorities, which recognize immigration pathways as one of several tools needed to sustain the physician and sonographer pipeline that supports echocardiography services. ASE has previously supported the H-1Bs for Physicians and the Healthcare Workforce Act (H.R. 7961) directly, and this coalition letter builds on that position by pushing DHS to act administratively on the same underlying problem: immigration-related fees and restrictions that most heavily burden recruitment into rural and underserved communities, the same communities ASE’s workforce agenda identifies as most exposed to the loss of cardiac imaging services.