PTI
Washington, Mar 2: A resolution has been introduced in the US House of Representative, which calls for creation of a special non-immigrant visa category for registered nurses.
The legislation, if passed, would facilitate much easier and faster availability of nursing visas to registered and practicing nurses from countries like India, China and Philippines. The US is currently facing a massive shortage of nurses.
Called the "Nursing Relief Act of 2009" the legislation proposes to make provisions for the new category of visas for registered nurses with an annual limit of 50,000.
The resolution introduced by Congressman John Shadegg has been referred to House Committee on Judiciary. It is cosponsored by Congressmen Jeff Flake and Ed Pastor.
Introduced at a time when the American economy is facing deep recession and nearly 3.6 million jobs have been lost in the last 14 month, Congressional observers are skeptical that such a bill can survive the legislative process.
The legislation notes that there are more vacant nursing positions in the US than there are qualified registered nurses and nursing school candidates to fill those positions. And according to the Department of Labour, the current national nursing shortage exceeds 126,000.
While countries like Philippines, India and China have an oversupply of nurses, the legislation says that major hospital systems in the US spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year recruiting foreign nurses under its current immigration system.
"Current law, with certain limited exceptions, requires health care providers to sponsor desired nurses for permanent resident status while the nurses remain outside of the United States, which can take as much as three years," it said. Further this cost is passed on to consumers and adds to the rising cost of health care.
"Health care providers cannot efficiently and effectively recruit qualified foreign nurses through the existing immigration process. Our health care system requires an immediate modification of Federal laws relating to recruitment of qualified foreign nurses in order to operate at an efficient and effective level," the legislation says.