The "O" Visa

Date: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 8:43 AM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

It looks like foreign doctors getting sick and tired of O-1 visas.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1725404

Jan. 6, 2003, 9:43AM

CAUGHT IN VISA VISE
INS policy puts immigrant doctors in limbo
By KIM COBB
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

Dr. Luis Ostrosky-Zeichner had to sweat out his visa application over the

holidays but eventually was granted one despite two previous denials.

He's a soft-spoken physician who finds it a little embarrassing to talk
about himself in superlatives. But if he wants to stay in the United States,
Dr. Orhan Ozkan has to convince the Immigration and Naturalization Service
he is extraordinary -- again.

"It is impossible for me to define myself as a superstar," he said. "But ...
I have done things that are not done by too many people."

His credentials as an interventional radiologist at the University of Texas
Medical Branch at Galveston were enough to impress the INS three years ago,
when it granted Ozkan a visa reserved for professionals of "extraordinary
ability." But that was before the Sept. 11 attacks focused a harsh spotlight
on the country's immigration service.

Now, medical administrators and immigration lawyers across the country
report the INS has all but slammed the door on the prized O-1 visas, leaving
physicians such as Ozkan and the communities that depend on them in legal
limbo. Many immigration experts believe it's a backlash that has less to do
with security than with INS employees' fear of reprisal.

The executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association
reports that the INS last summer sent employees to each of the nation's four
regional service centers -- including the one in Dallas handling Ozkan's
case -- to instruct them on tightening up the issuance of O-1 visas.

"It's a policy that shoots ourselves in the foot," said Jean Butterfield,
who is convinced that the INS has narrowed the window through which
immigrant physicians may enter in overreaction to Attorney General John
Ashcroft's mandate of zero tolerance for employee errors.

Agency employees are still smarting from the inexplicable breakdown in
communications that resulted in the INS mailing visa extensions for two dead
hijackers six months after the Sept. 11 attacks. And the INS is being
swallowed into the mammoth Department of Homeland Security, a reorganization
that has INS employees scratching their heads over everything from the focus
of the agency to their personal job security.

"So there's this whole orientation of deny, deny, deny that extends to
something so seemingly in the national interest as admitting physicians,"
Butterfield said.

"Even people getting National Institutes of Health funding from the
government -- major, major researchers," said Houston immigration attorney
Ann Penchak. "I think they are knocking out a lot of meritorious cases."

Ozkan, 35, is a participant in a UTMB research program funded by the
National Institutes of Health. But he is also providing a type of treatment
in Galveston that few physicians are yet trained to do -- using powerful
magnets to direct metal particles coated with chemotherapy drugs directly to
tumors through the bloodstream.

There is a documented shortage of radiologists in the United States; even
those of average ability are getting harder to find.

"There's a lot of innovation in our field for cancer treatment," Ozkan
explained. "I have been working in a specialized field of radiology and
medicine."

Ozkan applied for a renewal several months before his O-1 visa was scheduled
to expire in September. But he received word in mid-November that the INS
was requesting more supporting information before deciding his case.

An Immigration and Naturalization spokeswoman in Washington said there has
been no change in policy for granting O-1 visas for doctors and other
professionals of proven, extraordinary ability. The bar has always been
exceptionally high, she said.

But in the letter the immigration agency wrote to UTMB officials requesting
more supporting evidence for Ozkan's application, the INS noted that "the
Service is currently reviewing the standards by which this classification is
granted."

The O-1 is reserved for professionals who are the cream of the crop in their
fields -- the sciences, business, even athletics -- people who can
demonstrate international recognition and excellence among their peers. It's
good for three years, is renewable, and allows professionals who may have
completed their graduate studies in the United States to postpone the usual
requirement that they return to their country of origin after their studies.

UTMB currently employs about two dozen foreign physicians who are on O-1
visas.

"They not only teach students, but they are the physicians on call when
there are problems at the hospital," explained UTMB international affairs
director Maggie Pinson. "Yes, indigent health care will suffer if we lose
them."

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston reports having
"less than 50" physicians on O-1 visas, and Baylor College of Medicine has
about 30 of the O-1 physicians on faculty in Houston.

Employees at all three Houston-area medical / teaching facilities report the
same problem -- inexplicable delays and denials for physicians the INS
previously approved under the O-1 program. The INS reports the agency
granted 25,685 O-1 visas in fiscal 2001 but does not have the numbers
available yet to determine whether there were fewer O-1s issued in 2002.

"I can't say I'm angry with them, because I'm not -- I'm angry with the
process," said Rosemary Valencia, UTHSC international affairs director. "Now
that (the INS) is under Homeland Security ... we can see this continuing to
be a revolving door."

Valencia spent most of the holiday season sweating out the O-1 application
for UTHSC physician Dr. Luis Ostrosky-Zeichner. Working at Hermann Hospital,
Ostrosky is supposed to be a key link in the medical response chain if
Houston is hit with a biological weapon such as smallpox.

A native and citizen of Mexico, Ostrosky was twice denied the O-1 visa he
needed to do the hands-on work of treating patients at Hermann Hospital.
Valencia was able to secure him a substitute visa under the North American
Free Trade Agreement. But he had to briefly leave the country first, and the
NAFTA visa restricted him only to research.

Ostrosky is critical to the university, Valencia explained, because he has
been appointed to fill the position of a departing physician who sits on the
hospital's emergency bioterrorism committee. And Ostrosky is part of a team
that will conduct research under an $11 million Department of Defense grant
to prepare the Houston area against a biological threat, she said.

"I'm reading the Chronicle, hearing the CNN news, listening to the president
of the U.S. say we will be ready!" Valencia said. "Yet, the INS (was) not
recognizing that this person is going to be playing a critical role to
hopefully prevent or handle an emergency situation such as bioterrorism."

When the Chronicle forwarded questions about Ostrosky's case in late
December to the INS, a spokesman in Texas said it was agency policy not to
publically discuss individual visa applications.

But about a week later, the INS contacted Valencia to say that the agency
had decided to reopen Ostrosky's petition on its own motion and had now
decided he met the criteria for the O-1. The agency reversed itself and
summarily granted his visa, in spite of the two previous denials.

"We are just ecstatic," Valencia said. "Would that have happened without
(the Chronicle's) involvement? I don't know."

Ostrosky was overjoyed. His wife is an American citizen, most of their
furniture had to be put in storage when he was forced to return to Mexico,
and the inability to plan his future was keeping him up at night.

But beyond the personal inconveniences he experienced, Ostrosky said he was
baffled that a U.S. government agency was blocking his work to protect
American citizens from bioterrorism. He had agreed to receive the smallpox
vaccination himself, a decision not without risk, Ostrosky said, because he
wanted to be ready to help people.

"I am not a terrorist," he said. "I'm just a good doctor."

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