SCHUMER NURSE IMMIGRATION AMENDMENT LIKELY TO COME UP TODAY
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has offered an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill that would allocate 61,000 green cards unused in prior years to Schedule A nurses and physical therapists. The vast majority of these green cards are likely to go to nurses who will face new hurdles because they lack a non-immigrant visa category and have not been able to take advantage of adjusting status via the July Visa Bulletin. The flood of applications filed pursuant to that bulletin will likely send the EB-3 category back several additional years. Schumer's amendment (S.AMDT.2448) will likely be voted on today.
I am urging readers to support this provision. Without it, nurses face several extra years of waiting. The Visa Bulletin fiasco was great news for many, but it is terrible news for many nurses. Even those in the US interested in applying to adjust status found that they were locked out because of the built in hold time in the posting process which meant that it is impossible to obtain a July priority date. A long term solution will be to exempt nurses from the green card cap since the nurse shortage in the US is expected to last for several decades, but this will help until we get that legislative relief.
Please call, fax and email your Senators and urge them to support 2448, the Schumer nursing amendment to the DHS appropriations bill. You can find your Senator's contact details at http://www.senate.gov.