A temporary pause on nurse green cards has affected a thousand foreign healthcare workers in the United States.
In April this year, the State Department said that it would not accept any more EB-3 visa petitions for international nurses this year as a result of an administrative backlog, VisaGuide.World reports.
The State Department stressed that only persons who submitted their requests by June 1 last year would be eligible for visa interviews.
The EB-3 known as a Third Priority Worker visa permits three types of foreign workers to travel to the United States permanently and work there: skilled workers, professionals, and unskilled workers who have less than two years of work experience or training.
The decision not to accept any more EB-3 visa requests for international nurses this year has raised concerns that foreign nurses who have already committed to working in the US hospitals may get impatient and begin looking to other places for employment, according to senior vice president and chief nursing officer of Henry Ford Health in Detroit, Eric Wallis.
“We haven’t seen that at this point. And we’re really excited and happy about that. But that is certainly a risk at this moment,” Wallis told KCUR.
The health system has over 400 foreign nurses, according to Becker’s hospital review, and is planning to hire 200 more later this year. Wallis noted that the system is working in order to stay connected with the new hires and lobbying for US lawmakers to further expand the availability of visas for nurses.
The same source shows that Stormont Vail Health System in Topeka is another similar system working in order to maintain relationships with over 100 nurses from the Philippines who have accepted job offers.
In an effort to stay connected, the system holds monthly calls with the nurses and also addresses messages from Stormont Vail President Robert Kenagy.
“We have monthly Zooms with all of our nurses. We send them weekly emails and Dr. Kenagy’s updates and things like that to keep them feeling part of our Stormont Vail family,” the system’s international recruitment manager, Tiffany Beyer, told KCUR.
The EB-3 visa is limited in the number of visas that are issued per year. In addition, of the total 140,000 immigrant visas issued for the employment category, about 40,040 visas are allocated for the EB-3, or 28.6 percent of the total.