Relief for retrogression hope???

does the retrogression concerns everybody? how would it take (in average) if you are not from india, china or philipines?
by the way, it is just out of curiosity

You may not like what I am going to say, but after having worked in the US for years and having seen shortages come and go, they should not make any changes to what is in place now and what is in place. There is a reason that the US government has never made any changes to the number of visas issued per year. And have seen it in the past when nurses were only using the H1-B and there were times that none were granted to nurses for about five years. And it has happened more than once.

We are seeing more and more jobs shifted to overseas for manufacturing, so people are getting laid off here and it is much better from a tax standpoint, for them to be retrained and permitted to obtain nursing degrees and then be able to provide for their families just like everyone else wishes to do, but Americans need to come first. MI actually has a program already in place now to do exactly this. And when you figure that it takes approximately two years for a foreign grad to get thru licensure and immigration and actually get a visa for the US, one can train someone here and provide a job for them. Money spent for importing nurses, can be spent on their tuition and other related expenses and then it becomes a win-win solution in several ways.

Things have changed significantly in other countries as well, look at the UK as well as the EU; they are not routinely offering licenses and visas to work there any longer as well. And then there are some countries that do not have any jobs for their own graduates but expect them to just be absorbed all over without any training or experience, and other countries are starting to clamp down on this and for good reason.

Retrogressions have been in place in the past and will be in place in the future, there are going to be more applicants for the limited number of visas for sometime.

And if you read some of Daly City RN's posts on the Philippine Forum he has hit it right on the head. If you are going to have 30 openings for jobs and have 3000 applicants, who are you going to accept? Any manager or HR person is going to select the ones that trained in the best schools and have the best experience. They can be selective and we are seeing that all of the time.

Certain areas have shortages and others do not and you do not see any facilities even wishing to petition for a foreign nurse as they have many graduates right in their own area to select from to begin with. And you see this in the cities that many foreign grads like to go to such as NYC, San Francisco, and even Los Angeles. You are not seeing direct hiring in any numbers from these regions at all, only sometimes an agency petitioning but then if there are no jobs available when it is time to go for the interview, the petition actually gets cancelled and we are seeing more of this as well.

Changes need to be made in other countries first, not the other way around, and personally, I would like to see local licenses required as well as work experience in a paying job being required as well. It makes it very hard when someone comes here and their training is not equal to what we expect over here in the first place.

Sorry to be on my soap box, but you asked and this is the reason why I believe as I do.

Lawyers can argue for whatever they want, but they are not working in the field of nursing; nor are administrators and having to deal with those that have training that is significantly lacking.

I do expect requirements to get much tighter in the next year or two, not become less. The US can become much more selective in who it will issue a visa to and this is what needs to be done.

For those that are going into nursing now in other countries for the sole purpose of being able to come to the US right away, you need to think again. And perhaps change your major of study.

The entire world is under a retrogression at this time and it has been in effect since October 31, 2006.

Average wait for most now that have not started the process can be up to five years or so and no guarantee that one will ever be able to get a green card. There are many more applicants than there are visas available.

And if the person is now in the US, they are looking at years before the I-485 will be accepted again. Much already written on this topic so not going to go into it here, just do a search.

I am a clinical instructor in a US ,LPN program. Many of my students have college degrees and have opted for the LPN program since they can't get into the RN program. Once they are LPNs they will be able to get in the LPN-RN program.

Even though I have over 30 years of experience, I got no assistance in getting my MSN two years ago from my government and very little from my employer, 10K a year would have been great!

My point is, that my government needs to support US citizens first, not import nurses. US trained nurses are better since they support and have ties to the community ( they are not sending money home to a foreign country). Patients like having US trained nurses since they are cultural sensitive to the needs of their patients. If a hospital needs to support nurses, don't you think they are better investing money in the community rather then importing nurses?

I feel bad that the overseas nurses have been told that USA will cure all their financial problems.....I would be very concern if this bill passes and shame on who ever proposes this bill

No, it's the other way around. It's 20,000 per year for the primary beneficiary (the nurse) and the dependents aren't counted anymore with the 20,000 a year cap.

This has just been introduced and even if it survive, there's also chance that it won't be exactly what you see now.

And the way it has been worded on it's current version, it seems it is set to expire by Sept. 2011.

20,000 a year for 3 years is just 60,000. Practically the same thing as the previous one (50,000 visa). However, since this version does not anymore count dependents, there will be more visa numbers going to the nurse than going to their dependents.

It also doesn't mean the 20,000 has to be exhausted on a given fiscal year.

This is practically almost the same legislation for Schedule A but doing it another way and none of the disadvantages/problems of the last one.

For one thing, if the core of this bill survives, "bad" agencies will absolutely have no excuses on why a case should not go through in completion and on time. The "good agencies/petitioners" will also have confidence that cases they filed will go through w/o any hindrances such as freezing in the middle or latter stages of the process. No need for premium processing of the I-140 as well and the $1500 grant fee goes to a grant program for training more American nurses.

Wow, that's good news for 60,000 Philippine RNs who can go to the USA soon!

What about the rest of the world?????

No, that's not what anyone is saying here. The new proposal is nowhere close to actually becoming law. Most bills that are submitted in the US Congress never become law. Also, please be aware that there is a lot of public opposition in the US to increasing the numbers of legal immigrants coming into the country to take jobs that could be held by US citizens, and the senators and representatives are aware of that.

Most US nurses (most US workers of any kind) are strongly opposed to large numbers of workers (nurses or otherwise) coming in from other countries. There is no real nursing shortage in the US -- there are more than enough licensed RNs in the US right now to fill every vacancy in the country; they are just not working as RNs at present. There are some problems with distribution of nurses around the country (shortages in some areas and over-supply in other areas), and there is a shortage of nurses who are willing to put up with the low salaries and poor working conditions offered by so many healthcare employers, but there is no nursing shortage. Large numbers of RNs coming in from other countries keeps nursing salaries and working conditions here down, and US RNs are not happy about that. And most people in the US feel that the government should be helping our own citizens to be educated and working as RNs, rather than helping foreign workers come in while unemployment for US citizens is going up.

There is so much conversation on this board about the sorry situation for Philippines RNs in the PI, how low their pay is, and how awful the working conditions are. I wonder how PI RNs would feel if your government started allowing large numbers of RNs to come into the Phillipines to work from some other country where the conditions were much worse, and nursing salaries and working conditions in the PI were much better than they ever dreamed of in their own country? What do you think would happen to salaries and conditions in the PI if there were all these other workers who would be more than happy to work for much less, and in much worse conditions, than you have? Salaries would go down and working conditions would get even worse than they already are, wouldn't they!

There may be US laws in place to prevent you being paid less than what nurses are getting paid now in a particular area, but the ability of employers to import cheap labor from other countries certainly keeps nursing salaries from increasing, and keeps them from having to improve poor working conditions.

I wish that PI nurses would put a fraction of the time and effort they put into leaving the Philippines into working to improve conditions in your own country! Other countries don't owe you a good career and living because you come from a country with a corrupt government and poor economy. Why aren't the citizens of the PI putting their own house in order?

This time they have considered everything. Hope this bill passes.