Immigration and Visa Information

Many nurses hoping to move to the US will now have to wait around three years to gain their US visa, as opposed to the two months they needed to wait previously, as US immigration clears its backlog of EB-3 visa applications.

Foreign nurses are being told not to lose faith that they will be granted a US work visa, despite a current freeze on work permits for nurses from certain countries.

The new US Citizenship and Immigration Service policy has stopped supplying employment-based, EB-3 visas to applicants from countries that have exceeded their green card quota, until new visas are available.

Countries severely affected include China, India and the Philippines, which supply the majority of foreign nurses to the US.

However, immigration experts claim the nursing shortage in the United States is severe enough that it would be safe to assume solutions will be put into place early into the Obama term.

Several US immigration experts are saying that EB-3 visa processing delays will therefore be short-lived. There is much healthcare lobbying currently going on in Washington pressuring the new administration to alter its immigration policies.

Californian Rep. Tom Lantos, says he is “outraged” by the system, and is calling for visas allocated to workers from other countries that have gone unclaimed to be reassigned for use by Chinese, Filipino and Indian nurses. "This is a ridiculous situation, given the shortage of nurses faced by hospitals in California and nationwide," says Lantos.