AAIHR responds to visa freeze for international nurses through end of fiscal year

WASHINGTON, June 12, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the American Association of International Healthcare Recruitment urged immediate congressional action on the bipartisan Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act (HR 6205, S. 3211) after the US State Department advised that no more immigrant visas would be granted to international nurses for the remainder of the fiscal year.

"We're reaching a dangerous inflection point where acute nurse staffing shortages feed burnout in a force-multiplying cycle that grows worse every day," AAIHR President Patty Jeffrey, R.N., said. "Until we can correct capacity issues that force nursing schools to reject thousands of qualified applicants annually, international nurses will remain essential to safe nurse staffing. This latest visa freeze halts the flow of qualified international nurses when American hospitals need them most, and the only way to correct it is through congressional action."

The State Department's July Visa Bulletin indicated that persistent high demand for post-pandemic employment-based immigration had almost completely depleted the available supply of EB-3 visas, for which nurses compete alongside an enormous pool of other professions. To mitigate demand, the Visa Bulletin indicated a retrogression of the final action date on which a green card may be issued to document-qualified petitioners to December 1, 2021. EB-3 demand is so high that the State Department noted that the category might be further retrogressed in next month's Visa Bulletin or made unavailable. Because virtually all immigrant nurses who filed on or before December 2021 will have already moved through the processing queue, this retrogression amounts to closing the entire international talent pipeline.

The State Department's announcement comes as federal healthcare regulators finalized a staffing rule requiring American nursing homes to hire upwards of 20,000 new registered nurses over five years and is set against the larger backdrop of a worsening nursing shortage.

The HWRA would sidestep retrogression and annual caps on employment-based green cards by recapturing 25,000 previously issued but unused green cards for international nurses and another 15,000 for physicians. The bipartisan proposal has been endorsed by more than 50 organizations, including the American Hospital Association, American Health Care Association, American Medical Association, National Rural Health Association, and AAIHR.

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SOURCE American Association of International Healthcare Recruitment