On February 11, 2009, a new Nurse Relief Act was introduced in the House - HR 1001. This would introduce a new non-immigrant W visa category for nurses with an annual cap of 50,000.

The purpose of this Act is to create a new nonimmigrant, temporary visa category for registered nurses - the W Visa that will work in a very similar way as the H-1B visa.The bill is a good one for nurses, healthcare providers and, of course, for patients. Whether the bill makes it though the arduous process in the House and Senate and passes is

The Findings and Purpose of the Bill

   1. There are more vacant nursing positions in the United States than there are qualified registered nurses and nursing school candidates to fill those positions.

   2. According to the Department of Labor, the current national nursing shortage exceeds 126,000.

   3. States in the West and Southwest have a disproportionate number of nursing vacancies because of rapid population growth, which exacerbates a widening gap in the number of facilities and staff compared to patients that need care.

   4. Foreign countries such as the Philippines, India, and China have an oversupply of nurses.

   5. Major hospital systems in the United States spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year recruiting foreign nurses under our current immigration system.

   6. 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 3 years or more.

   7. This cost is passed on to consumers and adds to the rising cost of health care.

   8. Health care providers cannot efficiently and effectively recruit qualified foreign nurses through the existing immigration process.

   9. 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.

US President Barack Obama wants to train more nurses locally to deal with the shortage of nurses. However, it takes years to train nurses. Even if more nurses are trained in the US it is unlikely that this will provide all the nurses needed in the US. The only way forward is to allow in nurses from Countries such as India, china and the Philippines.