international student lpn to rn

Silverdragon102, BSN · Oct 21, 2008

With retrogression your friend is looking at several years waiting before she will get a visa. There is no way you can adjust your visa and stay and doubt that option will open up again for a few years. Moving this to the International forum

RNGrad2006 · Oct 22, 2008

A friend of mine, an international student, has completed a lpn course and has done the NCLEX exam and was successful at it. She is now doing a RN correspondence course with Excelsior College, which is based in the USA. Is there any hope of her getting a job in the USA when she completes this course.

If your friend is a Canadian or Mexican citizen then yes. But otherwise retrogression will make it difficult. However, hopefully your friend is aware that Excelsior is not accepted in all states, specifically California. But there may be others also. And some states have requirements that must be met in order to gain licensure (ie) in Washington State there is (at least the last time I checked a few years ago) a requirement to do a preceptorship of about 200 or so hours. But each state board of nursing would be able to provide the details once she gets that far. I looked into Excelsior at one point also but decided against it partly due to the lack of clinicals, heard many students that failed the expensive exam you do at the end, some states not accepting the education, besides the cost, etc...

Good luck to her.

suzanne4, RN · Oct 22, 2008

There are actually about 8 or 9 states now that do not accept Excelsior for licensure in their respective BON.

Issue is that even if the friend finishes the program, there are no visas available that will permit them to remain in the US and work. The US has been under a retrogression for two years and we are not expecting things to open for quite sometime, especially even more so for the AOS procedure. That is going to be over five years at the earliest just due to the 800,000 petitions that were accepted last summer and the fact that the US government only issues 140,000 green cards per year.

Unless your friend was already on a visa to be able to work here when they were done, it really makes no sense to go thru that program for a number of other reasons as well. The two year ADN from there is not accepted by most other countries for licensure as well as immigration so they are not going to be able to work without the BSN in most other countries. The two year ADN is not acceptable for any other type of visa for the US since it does not meet the requirements for the temporary visas that you hear mention of.

olrm123 · Oct 22, 2008

thanks. but I cannot find it in the international forum.

Silverdragon102, BSN · Oct 22, 2008

Your post has been moved already to the International forum. Alternatively you can find it under the region tab above