Urge Congress to Support HR 5924: Legislation to Address Nursing Shortage

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Urge Congress to Support HR 5924: Legislation to Address Nursing Shortage

Bill will provide visas for properly qualified RNs

While the shortage of nursing and healthcare workers persists, a visa shortage has compounded the impact of the workforce shortage by limiting the ability of American hospitals to hire foreign nursing professionals.

The Emergency Nursing Supply Relief Act, (H.R. 5924), will help alleviate the nursing shortage by providing visas for properly qualified registered nurses to work in the U.S.

Take action now and urge your Representative in Congress to support H.R. 5924 and help alleviate the nursing workforce shortage.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that jobs for registered nurses will grow 23 percent by 2008. That's faster than the average for all other occupations. About half of the RN workforce will reach retirement age in the next 15 years. The average age of new graduates is 31. They are entering the profession at an older age and will have fewer years to work than nurses traditionally have had. Click here to read more about the nursing shortage.

The U.S. has a waiting list for employment-based visas for internationally-educated nurses. In response, H.R. 5924 would: (1) set aside 20,000 employment-based visas in each of the next three years for foreign-educated registered nurses and physical therapists; (2) provide funds to help U.S. nursing schools expand the domestic supply of nurses; and (3) establish a three-year pilot program aimed at keeping U.S. nurses in the workforce.

**Click here send letter to your US congress: http://www.congress.org/sjhs/issues/bills/?bill=11498861

See allnurses: Discussion- Urge Congress to Support HR 5924: Legislation to Address Nursing Shortage

Sorry to point it out, but the exact country you are in, Canada, gives priority (extra points), to the foreign students for immigration purposes. If one study in Canada for two years, he/she get five more points, etc. Quebec has similar immigration policies.

Sorry to say, but the immigration system in US do give international students a lot of advantages (kind of priority) though. Educated in US, have a-year OPT which helps them gain US experience. An obvious example is when immigration visa becomes available, like last JULY visa bulletin chaos, they can file AOS immediately, which gives them advantage of renewable EAD.

Actually students no longer get priority and this has been for two years since the retrogression started and there is no reason for anyone that trained here to be able to get it.

There should have never even been the open window last summer as it was, there were no visas available then. And if you take the time to do the math, you will see that it will be more than five years for all of those from last summer to be able to get a visa, or even have a chance at one. So anyone that is contemplating nursing school here based on that assumption, really needs to think again.

Next issue and one that you are not seeing is the fact that if the new graduate was petitioned last summer, they needed to have taken and passed the NCLEX exam, had a letter from their BON that takes about three to four weeks to get, plus have other requirenments met. Most from last summer did not have this completed and that is why you are seeing so many post that were not even able to get jobs with the OPT in the first place as they would not be able to remain in the US when they were done.

If you are not an American and pay taxes here, then it is really not up to you as to how things should be done here. No one dictates what your country should do.

And there are no other exceptions made to any of the requirements for the student that trained in the US, only thing that gets waived is the English exams.

And looking at it from the other side, if you were the US government; would you prefer a nurse from another country with a solid ten years of work experience behind them or a new grad that just graduated and has no experience behind them? Same thing as an employer?

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Obviously this is an advocacy thread and not really a discussion thread.

It would not be right to hi-jack the thread from the purpose it was meant for, so it would be best if everyone sticks with the topic or purpose of the thread. There have been many threads that has been created for discussion purposes, including one in the Activism forum where some topics may be more appropriate to be posted instead of posting it in the International forum where foreign nurses use as their medium for support.

Thank you for understanding.

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Specializes in being a Credible Source.
...if you were the US government; would you prefer a nurse from another country with a solid ten years of work experience behind them or a new grad that just graduated and has no experience behind them?

If I were the US government I would choose the path that would help to lower the presently rising rate of unemployment among the citizens and legal residents -- I would seek to retrain people leaving other industries and provide incentives to hospitals to hire them.

I absolutely would not be inviting new residents to come take jobs in a growth industry.

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Specializes in being a Credible Source.
Obviously this is an advocacy thread and not really a discussion thread.

It would not be right to hi-jack the thread from the purpose it was meant for, so it would be best if everyone sticks with the topic or purpose of the thread. There have been many threads that has been created for discussion purposes, including one in the Activism forum where some topics may be more appropriate to be posted instead of posting it in the International forum where foreign nurses use as their medium for support.

Thank you for understanding.

OK...

I advocate contacting our elected representatives and asking them to enact legislation that seeks to solve whatever shortage might exist by employing people that are already legally entitled to work in the US.

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**Moderator's note:

Everyone is welcome to give their opinions but there is a place for everything. There have been a few reports lately of threads in the International forum and their sub-forums that some threads are being hi-jacked from their original purpose.

It would be best to make your own threads from scratch and post on appropriate forums such as an activisim/healthcare politics forum w/c we have at allnurses.com.

**Activism/Healthcare politics: https://allnurses.com/forums/f100/

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