Guadalajara! A case study in regulation by munificence.

One of the concerns addressed by the Health Professions Educational Assistance Act of 1976 was the large and increasing influx of foreigntrained doctors. Statistics showed that in each year since 1970 the number of foreign medical graduates entering the country had exceeded the number of U.S. medical school graduates, that the foreign graduates constituted more than 20 percent of all physicians practicing here, and that the percentage would rise to one-third by 1990 if current trends continued. Finding that "there is no longer an insufficient number of physicians and surgeons in the United States," the 1976 act included provisions amending the immigration laws to eliminate the preference that foreign medical graduates had received. (The wisdom of this action is irrelevant here, but one must note an apparent inconsistency between the assertion that these physicians were not needed and the un-