To those who say foreign nurses are no longer being used...

[UPSgirl]

I was reading through some of the previous posts and somebody made an interesting point. Why do hospitals continue to recruit nurses from overseas when we have a surplus of unemployed American nurses? Somebody replied that hospitals recruited overseas prior to the recession but no longer do so because the economy is unstable. Another person (an Internet troll I'm assuming) called the original poster a racist. At the time I wanted to post, but didn't. But the other day I was doing an Internet search for nursing jobs that offer relocation assistance and I stumbled upon this:

http://m.hopkinsmedicine.org/nursing/international/relocation_assistance.html

Very interesting...

[heriith]

Thx upsgirl. and i liked your username too (upsgirl)

[Pangea Reunited, ASN, RN]

I work with a lot of foreign nurses. The problem I keep hearing about from them is the extended wait time to get here. It can literally be years. From what I understand, it used to be a much faster and easier process.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

To be honest I have actually asked myself the same question.

[caroladybelle, BSN, RN]

As I work at the facility in question, I can say that my department has not hired a foreign nurse that did not already have a full clearance to work in the US in a very long time.

I actually know of several cases of very talented students/UAPs that worked on the unit in limited ( due to work regulations) hours, that the staff requested stay after graduation, signed petitions. None were able to meet the criteria that would permit them to work in the US.

Does Hopkins have a policy in place for handling nurses that might be recruited from overseas if there were a shortage or a need to do so, for a specialty position? Certainly. Are they routinely hiring overseas nurses for standard nursing positions, when fully qualified local nurses are available? Not that I have seen, and I work on one of the harder to fill positions.

Add: when I was hired, my orientation group had 25 or so nurses in it, with a total of maybe 50 people. The applications from that were qualified, from what I was told, were well over 1000 for that week.

[elkpark]

I don't see anything on the JH webpage about how old it is. I imagine most every large, well-known academic medical center has something similar on their website. That, by itself, is no evidence of how many foreign nurses are currently being recruited.

[Not_A_Hat_Person, RN]

Hospitals recruit foreign nurses for the same reason tech companies recruit foreign IT people; they're essentially indentured servants. Their visa is tied to their employer. Getting a new job means finding a different sponsor, applying for a Green Card, or leaving the country.

Foreign workers can also be cheaper, and not just for wages. I live in an area with a lot of tourism. Resorts and hotels have been hiring a lot of foreign workers with H2B visas, even for year-round positions, because the employers don't have to pay Social Security, Medicare, or Unemployment for H2B visa holders. The visa holders also have to provide their own health insurance. Some places will only hire H2B workers.

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

Mostly International nurses enter with a immigrant visa (green card) under EB3 category, to get a work visa H1b they have to be minimum BSN and the job has to require BSN or higher. Currently EB3 is retrogressed with current waiting times 3-12 years depending where the applicant was born. I originally had a job in AZ and application under EB3 and would have eventually arrived in the US within the last 12 months and I would have been waiting over 8 years to make the move and I was born in a European country. China and India have the longest wait.

If you check out the World section you will see a few posts where the applicant has been abandoned by their employer and without a employer they can not process onwards resulting in loosing their priority date and chance of moving to the US as trying to find a employer willing to pick up very hard