President Donald Trump has focused much of his second term on bringing industry, wealth and progress back to the American heartland. Following the recent exposure of America's residency programs as roughly 70% to 100% foreigners, concerns have reached a fever pitch over the quality of foreign education prior to entry into the U.S. and dicey accreditation portals. 

"Unfortunately, our healthcare system is being taken over by people that trained in other countries, and 25% of today's doctors trained or grew up in another country, and we're seeing this influx of students from other countries who are taking residency spots from American medical students," Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, told Just The News. 

Bowden, a physician and author of the book, Dangerous Misinformation: The Virus, the Treatments and the Lies, continued, "We have about 30,000 medical students graduate every year. We have about 44,000 training spots or residency positions, and we leave out 7% of medical students who don't get a residency spot, and then those spots, those 7% plus an additional 14,000 spots are taken by foreign medical graduates." 

"They often don't have the same rigorous standards that the United States has, and it can be difficult to verify their credentials, and there is concern that do all these students really have the credentials that they claim to have," Bowden cautioned. 

Of 87 hospitals examined, a disproportionate percentage of non-U.S. citizens on staff

Moneycontrol.com, an India-based website, cites a post on social media by a group called Expose H1B Fraud that claims that 80 of 82 doctors recruited by Rochester General Hospital in New York were foreign workers on H-1B or J-1 visas. Expose H1B Fraud published a chart purportedly derived from residencyadvisor.com, a for-profit AI-powered website that helps medical students match up with hospitals for their residencies.  

The graphic ranks programs by the share of residents who are non-U.S. citizens, comparing international medical graduates against U.S. citizens and probing several internal medicine, radiology and pathology programs, including Rutgers Health/Monmouth Medical Center in New Jersey and Greater Baltimore Medical Center. Both of those facilities appear to be staffed by at or near 100% of foreign nationals. 

The data show that 87 programs examined are not a national sample, and that most U.S. residency programs remain majority American-trained. However, concerns remain over the number of foreigners training and working in the U.S. medical system, and the means by which they become residents at U.S. hospitals.

Additionally, the slots are not free of public cost. Medicare paid an estimated $21.2 billion in fiscal 2023 for graduate medical education, the Congressional Research Service reported, and the Government Accountability Office put the 2023 total at about $22 billion across more than 1,400 hospitals. 

Hospitals decide which applicants to rank, and credential concerns have also drawn scrutiny. 

Fraudulent nursing diplomas and more 

The United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) program invalidated scores for 832 examinees tied primarily to Nepal after finding anomalous results consistent with unauthorized access to exam content, MedPage Today reported, and court filings said investigators also reviewed patterns linked to India, Pakistan and Jordan. 

Invalidated scores block Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates certification and Match participation until the exams are retaken or reconsidered.

Further concerning the issue of foreigners in the medical system, recent headlines have exposed the practice of medical credentialing without the appropriate education or degrees. According to federal investigators, a family tip cracked open Operation Nightingale, a scheme that sold fraudulent nursing diplomas from once-approved Florida schools. 

Isaac Bledsoe, an HHS-OIG (Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General) agent, revealed that the relative was asked to lend the unnamed suspect about $16,000, so he could purchase a diploma from a South Florida school. 

An undercover agent then purchased credentials for that amount. The Justice Department says the first wave moved more than 7,600 fake diplomas and transcripts, which buyers used to sit for the national exam and, if they passed, to obtain licenses. Just the News later reported a broader tally near $250 million and about 15,000 buyers.

Overall picture not bleak at the moment

National match results look different from the outlier programs in that chart. Each spring, the National Resident Matching Program runs the Main Residency Match, the process that pairs medical graduates with hospital training slots for their first year after medical school. Those first-year slots are called PGY-1, or postgraduate year one, positions.

In the 2026 match, U.S. Doctor of Medicine seniors — students in their final year at American allopathic medical schools, which award the Doctor of Medicine degree — matched to a first-year slot 93.5% of the time. 

That figure does not include seniors at osteopathic schools, which award the Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree, or graduates of foreign medical schools. 

Non-U.S. citizen international medical graduates, meaning foreign nationals who earned their medical degrees abroad, did not match at that rate. Of 11,944 active applicants in that group, 56.4% matched a first-year position, the lowest rate in five years. Their applicant pool has also grown sharply, up 51.9% since 2022.

Amanda Head is White House Correspondent for Just the News. You can follow her here.