Petition to the Congress by US International RNs

Ginger's Mom, MSN, RN · Feb 9, 2009

Unfortunately this petition is not timely. There was a nursing summit held last week in Baltimore.

http://include.nurse.com/article/20090209/NATIONAL01/102090107/-1/frontpage

The shortage has decreased in half in the last year with no interventions. I predict next year it will be lower.

Take aways I see:

More nursing educators ( MSN Level).

Need for experienced nurses.

Shifting of nurses from saturated areas to needy areas.

There are thousands of qualified students who wish to study nursing they are only lacking faculty to teach them.

psherpa · Feb 9, 2009

I understand the need for more nursing educators and more importantly, nursing programs in the the schools throughout the country. You can browse the nursing shortage section in our website where it lists thousands of qualified students being turned away because of lack of educators and not enough nursing programs in the country as well.

However, if you have read the entire article in the link you sent, you will see that and I quote here, "The national nursing shortage has eased up from a national rate of about 13% just a few years ago to less than 6.5%, Buerhaus says. This is due in part to a trend in which nurses are coming out of retirement or increasing their hours to help make ends meet when spouses are laid off. Plus, some healthcare organizations have instituted hiring freezes.The national nursing shortage has eased up from a national rate of about 13% just a few years ago to less than 6.5%, Buerhaus says. This is due in part to a trend in which nurses are coming out of retirement or increasing their hours to help make ends meet when spouses are laid off. Plus, some healthcare organizations have instituted hiring freezes."

So, take away points here are that contrary to expected numbers of baby boomers retiring and the predicted nursing shortage on this fact, some are thinking of coming back or have come back because their spouses might have been laid off due to the current crisis. Plus, there seems to be hiring freeze related to the crisis. So, I do not think just relying on this trend one can say that this is a permanent solution to the nursing shortage crisis, because you can not expect baby boomers generation to continue working forever. Time will come when they will have to retire, No?

I therefore think your suggestion that nursing shortage crisis will be better off next year might come out to be true, but only in response to the current crisis.

Thanks

Ginger's Mom, MSN, RN · Feb 9, 2009

I agree relying on this trend is not the right way to go. President Obama wants every American employed and if need be re -educated. With 10 million unemployed this leaves lots of Americans looking for re-education and now we have the time to provide it. To me a win win situation. For people with a previous college degree they can be licensed in less than 1.5 yrs. Others can get an ADN and be employed in two years.

suzanne4, RN · Feb 10, 2009

Sorry , but you are barking up the wrong tree at the moment. Lay-offs are happening all over the US, on average it is 10% per state and in some areas even higher. There are areas that are oversaturated with new grad nurses that are unable to find a job.

As long as Americans are out of work, you most definitely are not going to see a push to bring in foreign staff. And actually facilities cannot even offer the job until they prove that they cannot find an American for the job.

Next question for you: How many foreign nurses are working in your country as nurses? If your country is not open for foreign nurses or American nurses to be able to work there, then there is no way that you should think that anyone is entitled to demand that the US take them.

There happen to be many nurse educators that have actually gotten laid off from hospital jobs as well right now, so what you want, just does not hold any water.

suzanne4, RN · Feb 10, 2009

And the nursing jobs that you see are for experienced nurses, new grads are having problems finding jobs as well.

Our president is currently on the television at the moment stating how bad things are here, and it is going to get worse and not better.

We are all very aware of what is in the paper, but school programs are even being cut now.

redranger · Feb 10, 2009

Unfortunately this petition is not timely. There was a nursing summit held last week in Baltimore.
http://include.nurse.com/article/20090209/NATIONAL01/102090107/-1/frontpage
The shortage has decreased in half in the last year with no interventions. I predict next year it will be lower.
Take aways I see:
More nursing educators ( MSN Level).
Need for experienced nurses.
Shifting of nurses from saturated areas to needy areas.
There are thousands of qualified students who wish to study nursing they are only lacking faculty to teach them.

It seem like the Medical Industry wants a nursing and doctor shortage so they can charge outrageous prices to the pateint.

All these can be solved easily in my opinion, but it would overflow the market place with worker and thus lower revenues for the medical Industry.

Ginger's Mom, MSN, RN · Feb 10, 2009

I can't speak for MDs, but as a nurse and a consumer I wish the same consumer protections that tradesmen enjoy. I have never seen a foreign plumber or electrician practice in the USA without completing the whole program in the USA. Why should nursing have a lower standard then plumbers or electricians ? I personally don't think the screening for IEN is high. In Canada they are starting to do an assessment of IENs which is fair.

We need more advanced practice nurses - the majority of the IENs have no experience. This is not going to help the nursing situation in the USA or the patients.

suzanne4, RN · Feb 10, 2009

It seem like the Medical Industry wants a nursing and doctor shortage so they can charge outrageous prices to the pateint.
All these can be solved easily in my opinion, but it would overflow the market place with worker and thus lower revenues for the medical Industry.

Sorry, but this has nothing to do with shortages of anything else, but the state of the US economy. People are being laid off all over this country and this includes nurses and other health care professionals. If there are nurses that are being laid off and facilities have hiring freezes in place, then they most certainly are not going to open the doors to bring in more foreign staff.

A country's requirements is to make sure that their citizens are working first, and then and only then, if a shortage is there are there others that are brought in. And I have lived thru periods of time when the H1-B visa was used for all nurses and only that and there were five year periods where they were no approval for any nurse. This is not anything new.

But with things the way that they are plus the retrogression, do not expect anything to open soon. And why in the world would a foreign individual petition a political official here, you do not see any of doing it in your countries because we wish to work there.

Let's be realistic about things.

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And as what was brought up by the poster above you: How many foreign plumbers and electricians do you see coming over here and directly being able to work? What about the salaries or pay for the work that a master plumber does per hour? You do not call that expensive in most cases? For the amount of schooling and training involved, it is more than many nurses get as well as physicians in some areas. So please look at it from the other side and not just blame nursing and/or medicine for any of this. Health care workers did not cause the economy here to collapse, but it has and things are going to need to get corrected here first before any foreign staff can expect to be brought over.

Nurse!Nurse!Hello? · Feb 10, 2009

I just want to make sure I understand what you are saying.

Basically, your position is that since you came to the US on a student visa, you believe you should be allowed to stay here and work. You should be given special consideration, bypassing the usual retrogression pile-up, since you are already here. Is that right?

The US has a clear-cut immigration policy which involves waiting your turn. There are thousands of foreign citizens who would also like the opportunity to come to the US and work, and I doubt that many of them would support your reasoning or agree that you have a "special" issue.

I am also not comfortable with foreign citizens petitioning the US government with frivolous concerns. I certainly wouldn't feel it is my right to petition your country's government with my issues! And--as others have mentioned--the US government is certainly not going to give any serious consideration to your petition at this time, due to the increasing unemployment rate among US citizens.

In my opinion, it's a bad idea compounded by incredibly bad timing.

CharmedJ7 · Feb 12, 2009

I agree on the bad timing thing, but generally I do think that being educated in the country should give you an immigration advantage over foreign-educated nurses since it means you've been trained for our system. If we are not willing to do this we should not be accepting them as students in the first place, since it puts them between a rock and a hard place to train them for our system and refuse to let them work in it. On that note too, if we don't want them to work, we are essentially taking spots from US residents we do want to work, so the system seems illogical and at best a way to scam international students into paying us high tuition.

To this:

"I can't speak for MDs, but as a nurse and a consumer I wish the same consumer protections that tradesmen enjoy. I have never seen a foreign plumber or electrician practice in the USA without completing the whole program in the USA. Why should nursing have a lower standard then plumbers or electricians ? I personally don't think the screening for IEN is high. In Canada they are starting to do an assessment of IENs which is fair."

Reread the OP, I believe they are referring to those who HAVE been trained in the US, just happen to not be US citizens. I agree that the assessments are a good idea for truly IENs, but make no sense for those who have received their nursing schooling here.

In Canada, international students graduating from University are eligible for a 3-year work permit, which gives them enough time to get full-time, Canadian work experience and qualify for permanent residency if they so desire. I think this is a very good system, as it prevents brain drain and acknowledges the investment that person has made in the country already.

suzanne4, RN · Feb 12, 2009

To take this a step further, why should someone that trained in the US be given an advantage over someone that has trained out of the US and possesses ten years of full-time work experience.

Going to school in any country should not make it automatic that they can remain there when they are done with their training and get permanent residency. Americans are not able to do this in other countries as well automatically.

It is also different when there are not all of the Americans that are out of work, and this includes nurses. A governments responsibility is to make sure that its citizens are working first, not those that are from other countries. And if you take the time to notice, these other countries also place their citizens first as well.

Getting a green card is a privlege, it is most definitely not a right for anyone.

And it should never be assumed as such either.

Sorry, but the retrogression has also been in place for more than 28 months at this time, so this is nothing new that is being sprung on anyone. And if they came here under the F-1 visa to attend nursing school, they should have been vary aware of this information from their international advisor in the first place.

There are so many nurses that actually are in-line for visa processing in front of all of the others here, that it would be years to get them thru the system. Next issue is that the AOS processing already has more than 800,000 that have submitted their I-485 petitions July/August 2007 and are still waiting for the green card. It is going to take more than five years just to get thru these that are waiting as a start. Then you have the added issue that new grads in the US in many locales are having problems getting hired at this time as well.

The US happens to have an OPT in place for the 12 months and for some specialties, they can get an added 17 months to it; but this is not in play for nurses and we do not expect it to be either. It still does not give one and advantage for the green card. Actually the only advantage is that one does not have to write the English exams if their basic training was done in the US.

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But what bothers me the most is when a foreigner posts that we all should contact our government officials so that rules can be changed to suit them. You would never see this happening in any other foreign country, ever.

When the US has a shortage of RNs and all are working that wish to work, then that is another story. But when we see nurses being laid off as well as hiring freezes put in place and new grads that actually are Americans and trained here being unable to get hired, then do not expect to see anything open up for the foreign nurse. When one graduates, they are far from being a specialist, even if they trained here in the US; therefore do not qualify for any other visa other than the green card.

But that is most definitely not the case now. And even though Canada and even the UK has programs similar to the OPT that we have in place, it is still hard to get hired there now as well as be able to remain when the post-training period is complete. Canada now also is getting hit as hard as the US in terms of the recession, so expect some of these programs to change as well. The UK already changed their requirements several years ago.