Immigrant Doctors Training To Become Healers Again

[AlphaCentauri]

MIAMI | Two years ago, recently arrived from Colombia, Herlly Camacho parked cars for a valet service and served cocktails at a Miami Beach disco.

Those jobs were an odd fit, considering her training. She's a surgeon.

Hers is a common story.

An estimated 5,000 foreign-trained doctors enter the United States legally each year. Nearly a fifth of that number, including Camacho, receive asylum or federal refugee protection after fleeing their homelands.

Most lack the time, money and help they need to earn licenses and prove themselves as American doctors. Often they abandon years of training and settle for jobs that require little or no education.It's misses filling a need in the United States, which faces a looming doctor shortage.

But now, in a quiet corner of Miami-Dade College, Camacho and dozens of fellow refugee doctors are studying to get their old lives back. The college is one of a handful in the nation with programs to help refugee doctors and other professionals reclaim their former careers.

One classmate, a physician from Cuba, began his life in America cleaning bathrooms at Hertz car rental. Another hauled boxes in a warehouse.



http://www.theledger.com/article/20090215/NEWS/902150324?Title=Immigrant_Doctors_Training_To_Become_Healers_Again

[thunder rising]

1. Hey look, the American Dream! It works.