Hospitals working to bolster their burned out and dwindling nursing staffs by hiring internationally trained nurses were stopped in their tracks when the State Department issued a red light on green cards in April.
As contradictory as the visa retrogression might seem — announced just as healthcare systems are struggling with a critical nursing shortage — the State Department and White House have "zero discretion" when it comes to the number of employment visas that can be issued to immigrants, according to an opinion article published June 5 in Time.
In the article, the authors — former HHS secretaries Alex Azar II (2018 to 2021) and Kathleen Sebelius (2009 to 2014) — called on Congress, the only entity with the ability to issue and allocate visas, to take action.
"Each year, processing issues and other inefficiencies across various government agencies result in thousands of issued visas going unused," according to the authors, noting there is precedent for Congress to "recapture some of these allocated-but-untouched green cards for the express use of immigrant nurses."
Congress made this decision — to reallocate visas — in 2000 and 2005. The Congressional Research Service reports there are approximately 220,000 employment-based visas that could have been recaptured and reallocated to help hospitals manage the nursing shortage as of 2021.
Read the entire Time article here.