Question - international student study nurse?

[ineedsomehelp]

Hi, guys and girls, how are you today?

first of all, i will introduce myself to you and hope you all would have some understanding of my background. I am an international student, I recently graduated from college with a biological science degree and currently working in a hospital's research laboratory. i wanted to become a doctor to help patients clinically, but lately i found that to be impossible, due to the tuition/and my visa status. I also was considering nurse, since nurses can help patients clinically as well, and is alot cheaper to go to school than medical school's 200-300k dollar tuition I am really looking forward to the BSN program offered in alot of universities. but i have come to alot of questions that wanted to get answer from you guys

1. i know the economy is so bad, are nurses with BSN degrees hard to find jobs?

2. so BSN is equivalent to RN and after i graduate i can just take the RN exam, pass it and then i am an RN?

3. before i was hearing people saying that nurses can get green card from the government. i know there is a backlog now. but how long do i have to wait for it, or is it still possible to get one? because bachelors now wait for 15-20 years, masters wait for 8-9 years, PHD's will be waiting for at least 5 years before they can submit their green card application...

4. i really don't want to end up like i graduate from nursing school, and i can't help anyone, then i go back to my own country... that is just ridiculous...

5. what are the salaries of RN's? i don't trust sites like salary.com gives "theoretical" salaries, lol, it's just too good to be true over that kind of sites...

ps: i should have mentioned that i have been in US for 12 years (ya... what a failure i only have ssn now...) and i attended US high school and university and work in a US hospital now... just i am not sure about my future if i want to apply to nurse school and what to do after that... my current employer already agreed to file H1-b visa for me but that is for my current job :/ i kind of want to get to the clinical approach...

[chrisciwi]

I dont know too much about visas, but maybe you can talk to your human resource manager about pursuing nursing as your career WITH THAT HOSPITAL and see if they will still file a H1-B visa, it doesn't hurt to ask. Im sorry that I couldn't be much help other than that

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

Getting a GC will depend on where you was born and what category you come under. For most it is EB3 and there are several years wait and no idea how long it will take. I would suggest a good read in the International forum (found under the region tab above)