{"id":22761,"date":"2020-04-07T15:13:01","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T19:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=22761"},"modified":"2020-04-07T17:11:37","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T21:11:37","slug":"nursing-shortage-foreign-workers-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/04\/07\/nursing-shortage-foreign-workers-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Importing Foreign Nurses is Not a Long-Term Solution to Staffing Shortages"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
To ease the burden of the coronavirus pandemic on hospitals, both New Jersey<\/a> and New York<\/a> approved the fast-tracking of medical school graduations to get more hands to the front lines. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont<\/a> and the Veterans Health Administration<\/a> have issued pleas to retired medical professionals to return to service. But some believe there is an additional need and are calling for expedited processing of visas for foreign nurses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an April 3 letter<\/a> to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia, and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, Georgia Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both Republicans, urged the Trump administration to prioritize the processing of EB-3 visas for foreign nurses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur\nnation\u2019s hospitals will be overwhelmed if they are not able to hire more\nnursing staff. We urge you to help our hospitals address this crisis by\nexpediting your processing of visas for immigrant nurses,\u201d they wrote.\nSenator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who is a doctor, co-signed the letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The State Department did encourage<\/a> foreign medical professionals, particularly those working on COVID-19 treatment, to contact the \u201cnearest embassy or consulate for procedures to request a visa appointment.\u201d Ian Brownlee, the assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, clarified<\/a> a day later that the March 26 guidance only applied to those \u201calready accepted into existing U.S. programs.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n While foreign-educated nurses may be necessary in the short-term, foreign recruiting groups<\/a> and like-minded columnists<\/a> are trying to exploit the current crisis to make a case for importing foreign nationals to fix a decades-old problem \u2013 a shortage of nurses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The first problem with this argument can be found in a new World Health Organization (WHO) report<\/a> that finds a global shortfall of 5.9 million nurses. The greatest gaps are found in poorer countries, such as India and the Philippines, which happens to be the source of most immigrant nurses in the U.S. and Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To reverse the shortfall, WHO suggests \u201ccountries that are over reliant on migrant nurses should aim towards greater self-sufficiency by investing more in domestic production of nurses.\u201d Second, ours is not a problem of a lack of interest in nursing, but a dearth of nursing school teachers. As CNN reported<\/a>, despite a rising number of retirements, nursing schools rejected more than 56,000 qualified applicants from undergraduate programs in 2017. <\/p>\n\n\n\n