The inertia comes as the force’s growing need for medical professionals becomes clearer — and more urgent. More than 200 military medical students and nurses will receive diplomas early, officials said Thursday, and officials have braced for a surge in demand in military hospitals.

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It is unclear whether the military has enough doctors to treat its own troops and family members as the pandemic worsens. The Army is testing if medical soldiers who have left the service are interested in rejoining, and several active duty units have mobilized to help civilian hospitals with non-coronavirus patients.

More than 300 service members have been infected, the agency said Thursday, including some who have recovered.

The immigrant physicians work in civilian hospitals but signed up to serve part-time with the Army. Now, they are desperate to serve in uniform as they wait for background checks to complete.

An internal medicine specialist, a doctor from India with a specialty in respiratory illnesses, said he has treated at least 40 patients with the coronavirus in a civilian hospital in New York City. He enlisted in the Army in 2015 and has mostly sat around while on reservist duty as a low-ranking soldier with little to do.

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“I love to help people,” he told The Post. “But these hurdles are unnecessary. I’m wasting years of my medical experience in the Army.”

Like the other five recruits interviewed for this story, he declined to provide his name and some identifying details for fear of retribution from the U.S. government.

Those six recruits combined have spent 25 years on limited reserve duty as junior soldiers unable to use any of their medical skills in uniform.

The Pentagon did not return a request for comment, and the Army did not say how many immigrant physicians are still waiting to muster into the service.

The physicians enlisted in an immigrant recruitment program that traded fast-tracked citizenship for language and medical skills that the Pentagon identified as both vital to national security but in short supply among U.S.-born troops.

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More than 10,000 skilled immigrants entered the military in the last decade, mostly for their linguistic skills. The program shuttered in 2017 amid security concerns and heightened background checks that stalled the process for years.

At least several dozen physicians are still waiting for their checks to finish. They busy themselves with menial tasks at their reserve units, where they have limited duties, said retired Army officer Margaret Stock, the architect of the program and an immigration attorney who has represented physician recruits.

The military has consistent physician shortages, a 2018 Government Accountability Office report found.

“The nation is facing a crisis when we need these people,” Stock said. “It was the point of recruiting them in the first place.”

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The Military Accessions Vital to National Interest program was championed by Special Operations Command for its stream of language and cultural experts who could aid them in unconventional missions, a Pentagon overview of the program said.

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It also helped the Army Reserve fill many dental jobs, a vital task because dentists must be available to clear soldiers for combat deployments. By 2017, two-thirds of Army reservist dentists came through the program.

But the pipeline closed that year following new stringent regulations and enhanced background checks, leading some to trickle in through thickets of bureaucracy.

One of them, a pulmonologist from the Middle East, treated veterans at a VA hospital, trained medical students, and in 2016, enlisted in the Army to provide his expertise in uniform.

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He sits on the coronavirus response board at his Georgia hospital. “Respiratory failure is where my expertise begins,” he told The Post. “I take care of the sickest of the sick.”

He and the other physicians are in a reserve status that allows basic access to Army bases and limited responsibilities, but they have not been fully processed for basic or officer training.

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He came to the United States a decade ago, but his enlistment coincided with new stringent background checks that delayed hundreds of recruits from completing the enlistment process, turning the reliable stream of recruits into a flurry of lawsuits, asylum claims and fears of deportation.

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The process dragged out for years, he said, until last week, when he was given an unfavorable determination for having foreign family members, even though he was naturalized — part of a pattern of canceled enlistments and failed screenings for fact-of-life events and, often, simply for existing as foreigners.

He was given 30 days to provide a rebuttal for the determination, which does not yet mean he is denied a chance to serve.

“It was not my choice to be born in a different country,” he said. “I don’t know what I need to do to prove my allegiance.”

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An internal medicine specialist in Louisiana — who said he has treated nearly two dozen coronavirus patients this week alone — has faced similar hurdles. He enlisted in 2016 and was naturalized, but he was also given an unfavorable determination because he often speaks to his foreign-born father.

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His reserve duty has mostly involved classes and occasionally trash removal duty typical of junior soldiers, not physicians. “For more than four years I’m sitting and doing nothing,” he said.

Immigrant physician recruits typically join the Army Reserve, which would primarily treat other soldier members unless they were mobilized to assist in a public health response.

The Defense Department has failed to identify and place talented troops into jobs that harness their abilities, said Paul Scharre, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former policy analyst at the Pentagon.

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“The military has done an unequivocally horrible job tapping into skills,” he said. But with MAVNI, “we know adding these people would make a difference.”

A Chinese epidemiologist in California echoed the sentiment. He enlisted in 2016 and was naturalized but has yet to move forward as an officer, spending time cleaning facilities as a cook at his selected reserve unit.

“I have skills and I can help,” he said. “I feel useless.”