Over 15,000 U.S. doctors are from banned Muslim countries

President Donald Trump insists that the Muslim Ban is vital to the security of the United States, despite the fact that people from the seven countries have killed >zero civilians in the last 30 years. 

The ban is currently on pause, after a federal appeals court suspended the executive order.

But, does Trump know that 15,000 doctors in the US are from the 7 Muslim majority countries that have been banned? Won't endangering their status put American lives at risk? Some food for thought. 

There are 656,000 doctors and surgeons working in the United States, of which 254,000 are immigrants. 

15,000 of those doctors come from the 7 Muslim majority countries that have been subject to Trump's Muslim Ban. 

According to The Medicus Firm, a firm that recruits doctors for "hard-to-fill" jobs, about 9,000 of these doctors are from Iran, 3,500 from Syria and more than 1,500 from Iraq. 

The largest contributors to the health care sector in the US actually come from "India, China, Philippines, Korea and Pakistan." 

Two other countries on Trump's list - Iran and Syria - are considered to be the sixth and tenth largest contributors to the industry respectively. 

The Iowa Board of Medicine, The Des Moines Register, reported that 172 doctors practicing in Iowa alone are from the 7 Muslim countries part of Trump's list. 

All in all, 23 percent of the state's 13,000 practicing doctors are foreign-born. 

Syrian Kinan Alhalabi trained in the suburbs of Damascus and then moved to the US, where he's been living for two years. 

He's done several stints at top hospitals including the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic. 

In recent months, he was offered job interviews at a number of hospitals to be a resident, but following Trump's executive order Alhalabi became anxious. 

He emailed all the hospital program directors, asking if the order will affect his chances. 

His work permit will run out this summer, and if it is not renewed he will not be able to be a resident. 

“I see 30 American patients every day and try to heal them. It’s devastating after all this work to help American society and be a part of it that with one [presidential] signature everything could just fall apart,” he said, according to Scientific American.

"Presence and working at Harvard were my childhood dream," Seyed Soheil Saeedi Saravi told the Boston Herald.

Saravi had plans to join a Harvard University cardiovascular research lab next month, but had his visa suspended following the executive order. 

"Working at Harvard can make me an effective scientist for my country and even the world. All my attempts in my life was to be a useful person for my population."

The Iranian student was at the top of his class at Tehran University, according to Thomas Michel, who runs the lab.

Sudanese Suha Abushamma was forced to leave the US and go back to Saudi Arabia just hours after landing at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Jan 28. 

A first year resident at the Cleveland Clinic, Abushamma was given an ultimatum - either to withdraw her visa application "voluntarily" or by "force" which would have not allowed her back into the US for at least 5 years. She decided to withdraw her visa at the time. 

She has filed a lawsuit since then, saying that she was "misled and coerced" by US Customs and Border Protection agents into signing forms that withdrew her work visa. 

Since 2002, 31 new medical schools opened in the country and existing schools have increased class sizes.

Despite the efforts to increase the supply of doctors, there remains a shortage as America does not produce enough physicians to keep up with the high demand. 

"There are 22 percent more residencies available each year than there are American graduates to take them," >according to the NY Times.

Foreign-born doctors are now filling the gap, with a large number coming from both Iran and Pakistan.

This is expected to worsen if Trump's Muslim Ban doesn't get blocked permanently. 

According to a study in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) revealed that patients "treated by foriegn-trained doctors had better mortality outcomes than those treated by doctors who went through American medical schools."