Irreplaceable Indian doctors are a blessing, not a threat, for Americans

On my father’s first trip from small-town Texas to a big-city cancer hospital here in February, I tried to see things through his eyes. I noticed the long walk from the parking garage, the somberness of the waiting area, and the foreign accents that drifted from the conversations of both patients and hospital staff.

In an exam room, a friendly woman from the Philippines came in and asked Dad if he’d like to donate two tablespoons of blood for research.

Sure, he said. She consulted paperwork, paused, looked at my father in his cowboy hat, farmer’s tan and plaid shirt, and asked how he pronounced his last name.

“FAHL’-ken-berg,” he told her. After a second, he added helpfully, “It’s German.”

A faint glimmer of “I thought so” lit her eyes.

“That is not an Americansounding name,” she said playfully. We shared a much-needed chuckle.

At one time, Falkenberg was probably every bit as exotic, every bit as suspicious, as, say, Satija or Ummat. It still is in parts of East Texas.

These days, though, even those South Asian names aren’t foreign in America’s hospitals. They’re typical.

It’s estimated that about 25 percent of practicing physicians in the United States are foreignborn.

Which is partly why the plight of husband-and-wife Houston neurologists Dr. Monika Ummat and Dr. Pankaj Satija is so incomprehensible.

After more than a decade living and working legally in the United States, the West University Place residents with two American-born kids were nearly deported last week.

On Wednesday, they were given 24 hours to pack, collect their children and return to India, as the Chronicle’s Lomi Kriel reported. Apparently, a common discrepancy the government made in paperwork, for which the doctors had re-

cently been given a waiver to correct, had suddenly — under Trump-era immigration policy — become a threat to national security.

The doctors who hadn’t gotten so much as a traffic ticket in this country were desperate — not just for themselves but for their patients. Satija alone said he had dozens of surgeries scheduled for the next few days, including an operation to remove hardware from a woman’s spine. Satija, who helped found the Pain and Headache Centers of Texas, said he performs about 200 operations a month. American lives at stake

Now, maybe you’re someone who struggles to empathize with the plight of a law-abiding immigrant couple from India. Maybe you’re even among those in the comments section unmoved by their predicament and spouting off smug responses: They were stupid not to notice the discrepancy sooner, said one. Off you go, said another. No excuses, said one more.

But can you empathize with a patient? The woman waiting to have the hardware in her spine removed, expecting the specialist she knows and trusts to do it, only to learn that he might be banished from the country by then? How about the parent whose epileptic child is expecting Ummat to show up for the next appointment?

At the airport, Kriel reported that the agent who notified the couple about their last-minute reprieve noted: “I understand that you are physicians, and a lot of lives are at stake.”

Yes. Lives. American lives. At stake. Wake up, people. It shouldn’t take an emergency like this to make Americans see the danger of the president’s black-and-white enforcement of immigration law. It is snaring good people — those who don’t intend to harm Americans, and now, even those who try to help Americans.

Many supporters of Trump’s immigration policies revel in them. They delight in painting those affected as lazy or law-breaking. They’d rather not think of the immigrant doctors with whom Americans trust their lives, their children’s lives, their parents’ lives, every day. Welcome and wanted

A privilege. That’s how many in this country look at the act of leaving one’s native land for the opportunity of America. And surely, it is. But we are privileged as well to have immigrants such as Satija and Ummat here. The notion that they need us more than we need them is naive.

Many countries need doctors, nurses and other health-care workers. They come here not just for the standard of living, the freedoms and ideals, but because they feel welcome and wanted.

I pray they don’t stop feeling that way.

And I pray that the next time my dad shows up for an appointment at that big cancer hospital in Houston, and he’s greeted by a doctor or a nurse with an accent or a name that doesn’t sound quite American — yet! — she’ll smile and know we’re glad she’s here.