Can you sit for the NCLEX if you're an illegal immigrant?

With the fingerprinting and background checks they do - I'm sure they will know she's here illegally. I would think she wouldn't be able to take it, but I certainly do not know that for sure. I would think she would have to go through all the proper channels before they would give her an ATT. (Authorization to test). But this is not an area I am familiar with, so it may not be correct.

Oh God, I hope not!!!!!

How does this person think they are going to work? Has she heard of taxes and needing a SS number? Which makes me wonder how she got into school in the first place. She should take her degree and go back to her country to practice nursing until she can get back to the US legally. She is risking detention with INS and deportation - in which case the chances of her every getting back to the US legally are about nil.

I wonder too how she managed to get into school without proof of citizenship or as an eligible immigrant. Employers will demand proof as well. Boards of nursing can (and do) refuse licensure to those with a criminal history; and she IS breaking the law...

I think your friend should seriously consider what she's doing here and contact the state BON.

Me too, but I wouldn't be surprised. These days illegal aliens are allowed in-state tuition in a lot of state schools. Go figure.

Seems to me it would make sense to finish her education and then come into the country legally. As a Mexican citizen with a passport they qualify for a TN Work Visa.

There are a couple things I see here:
1) Perhaps she came here legally and overstayed the visa? Then she would still have a SSN.

2) Did this person come here as a child with her parents? Then it was not by her choice that she is here, and this type of situation is the reason I support the provisions of the DREAM act. And, I do not personally see what the big deal is about giving them in-state tuition. At least they are wanting to get an education. I vote we let them.

That sounds really good in theory....except that if she came here as a child, then she is going to have next to no clue how to be a nurse in another country, where practice, technology, terminology, and a whole host of other things may be different.

Immigration, especially if you are from the poorer, nonwhite countries in this world (OP did not specify the country of origin), is not as simplistic as the talking heads on TV would like you to believe. She may be here illegally, but she is trying to make something of herself, and I admire that.

That said, I would still advise her to think very carefully about what she is doing before risking anything taking the NCLEX.

The problem is that under current immigration law, if a person has stayed more than 6mo here illegally, then if they leave the country, they are not allowed to re-enter for 10 years. So if this person has been here illegally, gotten her education here, then goes back to her country of origin, and states on her application that she's been here illegally before (and they do ask), then it will be automatically denied. Perhaps there is someone here who knows something I don't, but I'm in the middle of immigration with my own husband who came here illegally and he can't leave the country and come back legally for the same reason.