'I am stuck': Indian H-1B kidney doctor can't join practice in North Carolina; awaiting $100,000 fee waiver

While the Donald Trump administration's $100,000 H-1B visa fee was meant for a deterrent for the tech industry to hire from overseas, the rural healthcare system is suffering now for want of good doctors as they can't pay $100,000. The Washington Post reported the plight of a health facility in Shelby, a small town in North Carolina, where patients had already booked appointments with an incoming nephrologist. But the nephrologist is in Hyderabad, India.

The new nephrologist who was supposed to join the facility is 30-year-old Vijaya Chelikani. Her employer requested a waiver for the $100,000 fee for "national interest". “I’m stuck right now,” Chelikani told Washington Post. “I want to start my job.”




The Shelby health care facility has three kidney doctors from abroad, two working on H-1B visas.

Nephrology Associates of the Carolinas can not afford to sponsor Indian kidney specialists, and it has not found an American well-suited for the job, the report said.

Chelikani graduated from a medical school in India and came to the US in 2020 on a trainee visa for a residency in Michigan and a two-year nephrology fellowship in Alabama. Then she took up a three-year work in the US in Shelby, deemed as a health professional shortage area.

'Didn't find any American nephrologist'

The Shelby practice informed the federal government that they could not find any US applicant and Chelikani was authorized to stay in the US. The practice submitted documentation to show that it had contracted a recruiting service and advertised in numerous medical journals and websites but got only two US applicants. One wanted to work doing transplants, which local hospitals do not offer, and another had cycled through numerous jobs.

As Chelikani's H-1B paperwork was getting done, she returned to India to visit family and could not return as the practice can't afford the visa fee and is waiting for a waiver from the government.