As we noted last month, the EB-3 immigrant visa quota cutoff date had been advancing more rapidly than usual due to the State Department projections of future demand on the limited quotas. The EB-3 quota is the quota category that presently limits the number of nurses who can immigrate to the United States each year. In addition, we warned that this recent progress could slow or retrogress as in the past.
The Visa Bulletin for June 2008 reflects EB-3 cutoff dates as follows:
China: March 22, 2003
India: November 1, 2001
Mexico: July 1, 2002
Philippines: March 1, 2006
All other Countries: March 1, 2006
We point out a comment made later in the June 2008 Visa Bulletin as follows:
"Demand for numbers, primarily by Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices for adjustment of status cases, is expected to bring the Employment Third preference category very close to the annual numerical limit in June. As a result, this category is likely to experience retrogressions or visa unavailability beginning in July. Such action would only be temporary, however, and a complete recovery of the cut-off dates would occur in October, the first month of the fiscal year."
We are pleased to see Congress' attempt to fix legal immigration in a piecemeal manner since the failure of comprehensive immigration reform last year. On the legislative front, it is important to recognize that the bills that were put forth in April and May are bi-partisan bills that would remedy many aspects of the present immigration system.
We discussed 2 of these bills last month in our newsletter: HR 5924 which would address the shortages of certain healthcare workers and offer significant solutions, and HR 5882 that would recapture employment-based immigrant visas lost to bureaucratic delays. This bill would permit approximately 225,000 immigrant visas to be recaptured and would amend the law so that green-card numbers lost at the end of the fiscal year could be used in succeeding years. In addition, HR 5921 would eliminate the per country quota for employment-based immigrants and end the spill-over of unused immigrant visa numbers between employment and family-sponsored classifications. Efforts continue behind the scenes in Washington DC to gather support for these legislative proposals, and we are very encouraged to see Congress finally recognizing the urgency of passing legislative reform.
On May 30, 2008 a national teleconference was held by the USCIS Ombudsman on the subject of Visas for Nurses . The public was invited to call in and voice concerns. We heard from healthcare facilities, staffing agencies, attorneys and individual nurses. While many of the suggestions made to improve the system would require legislation, most callers clearly made the point that the current delays in bringing healthcare workers to the United States are unacceptable and can lead to serious consequences. The USCIS Ombudsman indicated that all comments would be considered in an effort to improve the system, and that answers to the questions posed will be made public. We will, of course, post these to our Blog and our In Focus newsletter as soon as they are available.
