Employers and Visas

[suzanne4, RN]

Lawrence, Anna, and I are getting increased mail on this topic, and are seeing more posts about it as well, so thought that I would take the time to clear up some misconceptions that are out there and are increasing on a daily basis. :

1. Employers only submit a petition to USCIS, and nothing further. Then it is out of their hands.

2. Only the US Federal govt grants visas, employers do not, and do not have a special stack of visas reserved for them as some have told nurses that they have.

3. There is no guarantee as to when you will be in the US, forget about the 18 months that we are seeing being guaranteed to those that sign on the dotted line. They have n ocontrol over it, nor can they guarantee that you will get approved and get a visa.

4. That a facility has Labor Certification does not mean a thing when you are applying for the green card, it does not move you ahead of all of the others that are applying. PD dates and when the file was actually completed is what matters.

5. For those of you from the PIC countries that have not started the immigration process before now, please be aware that you are looking at minimum of two years at the very earliest to be in the US, and still no guarantee that you will get approved for the green card. Not one thing is going to be instant for you, no matter what the employer tells you. They have no control over the US State Dept.

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

Also to add LPN does not qualify for immigration no matter what the school or lawyer says if done abroad. Immigration rules set by the government is that to qualify you must be RN.

[lawrence01]

Just want to add few more things as well.

1) No lawyer can guarantee a case will move faster and will be given visas sooner than some nor the lawyer has a say on when things will move forward again; once they submit the petition (I-140), the Visa fee bill and Visa application (DS-230 forms) and all other necessary documents, their job is basically done.

2) No employer (Hospital, Nursing Home, etc..) can do anything regarding immigration. There may be some willing to petition someone at these times but if the current system does not allow filing of AOS then they can't do anything as well. Willingness is different from something that can actually be done.

3) Those who have not yet started the process, may want to greatly consider another country for now besides the US. Unless, of course if you are willing to wait for a couple of years. Majority of those under consular processing (CP) that have Priority dates of 2005 and 2006 still don't have their green cards up to now and AOS will not be as fast as before. In fact, there is a great possibility that the line for AOS will actually be longer now (after the July-Aug. application surge) compared to CP and it maybe a long time before AOS can be allowed to be done again.

4) Premium Processing for I-140 is still not allowed and may also be a long time before it can be re-instated. This is again the result of the July-Aug. application surge. USCIS will not allow PP because of the severe backlog that was created; they will be shooting themselves in the foot if they allow PP at these times.

5) It is expected that the wait time for the initial I-140 will now take longer, again as a result of the surge. You will not be hearing a certain Service Center approving petitions within just 2 mos. anymore (Texas SC). Both Texas and Nebraska SC are severely backlogged (due to the July-Aug surge again) w/c resulted in Vermont SC being activated again to handle I-140s just to help out.

6) Things will only improve if there will be visas specifically for nurses.

Forget about the 'no visa cap' for Schedule A - this will never pass US Congress. Only way is for a visa quota to reduce the backlog of pending cases filed under Schedule A.