Since the world was thrown into the COVID-19 pandemic, and even in the years before, the healthcare industry has been hit with a shortage of workers. But one potential fix is being prohibited by a cap on green cards.
While nurses have been reporting feeling burnt-out, with many even leaving the field altogether, some are saying that lifting restrictions on green cards for foreign-educated nurses could help ease the strain on the industry.
According to federal data, international nurses account for 16% of the country’s nursing workforce, but backlogs for visa applications have stopped the flow of those able to enter the struggling industry.
On top of that, the State Department cut off employment-based visas, or EB-3s, this month for nurses and other skilled workers for the remainder of the current fiscal year that ends in September.
Last year, a similar stoppage of the visas was put in place while workers continued to keep their heads above water, Axios reported at the time.
Each year, around 40,000 of the visas are available, a limit that hasn’t been adjusted since it was set in 1990.
This hard cap has created a massive backup, according to Chris Musillo, general counsel of the American Association of International Healthcare Recruitment, who spoke with Axios.
Musillo shared that currently, around 10,000 foreign nurses are being affected by the current freeze.
Congress has looked to address the issue, as late last month, Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) introduced the National Urgent Recruitment for Skilled Employees (NURSE) Visa Act.
The bill would “create 20,000 nonimmigrant visas per fiscal year to employ nurses in areas where the HRSA has determined there is a nursing workforce shortage and where the facility has a provider-to-patient staffing ratio in place,” Beyer’s office shared in a press release.
Another bill, proposed by Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), would also look to address the issue by opening 25,000 employment-based visas for nurses, utilizing green cards that have otherwise gone unused.
While action from Congress has garnered support, top voices in the field still stress that action needs to be taken domestically to resolve the stress on American nurses.
“We’re going to always hit the cap because we fail to do what we need to do here in the United States to make sure we have a sustainable nursing workforce,” Cheryl Peterson, senior vice president of nursing programs at the American Nurses Association, shared with Axios.