Immigrants on front lines

Desperate for skilled hands to fight a fierce enemy, leaders across the country are calling doctors and nurses out of retirement. Yet America is failing to tap into a valuable resource because of rules that effectively bar many foreign-trained doctors and medical workers from practicing here.

An estimated 65,000 doctors trained in other countries are ineligible to practice here because they haven’t met U.S. requirements that they have a year of resident training stateside.

A week ago, New York State smartly temporarily suspended rules preventing graduates of foreign medical schools from practicing medicine. The rest of the country should follow suit.

Meantime, in the name of marshaling every available human resource, the federal government must finally end its cruel crusade against young people who came to this country as children and have since become law-abiding Americans in every imaginable way.

Nationwide, an estimated 30,000 so-called Dreamers work in health care. Yet along with their brothers, sisters and cousins, all are poised to lose their status in June, when the virus may still be raging. That’s when the Supreme Court could allow Trump to end President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Indeed, of an estimated 1 million frontline workers in New York City, more than half are foreign-born, according to an analysis by the city’s controller, and 20% are undocumented.

Keeping the Trump deportation machine firing on all cylinders at a time like this threatens our economy, endangers public health and drives home the mindless cruelty of the current administration.