Article: Congress Can Tap Unused Visas To Bring Nurses and Physicians To Help Fight COVID-19 By Jeremy L. Neufeld

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Congress Can Tap Unused Visas To Bring Nurses and Physicians To Help Fight COVID-19

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</h3><h4><i>by <a href=”https://discuss.ilw.com/articles/articles/393846-article-congress-can-tap-unused-visas-to-bring-nurses-and-physicians-to-help-fight-covid-19-by-jeremy-l-neufeld#bio”>
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Jeremy L. Neufeld

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<p>
The COVID-19 pandemic has strained our health care system to the breaking
point. Our heroic health care professionals are working tirelessly to
provide care on grueling shifts, at great personal risk to themselves and
their families, but they need all the help they can get. Additional workers
— especially nurses — would be a godsend.
</p>
<p>
As it happens, thousands of nurses are waiting in the wings, willing,
qualified, and ready to help in the fight against coronavirus in the United
States, but are standing by for green cards to be made available to them.
The truth is, if employment-based green cards didn’t go unused each year —
partially because of bureaucratic errors — then they would already be here.
</p>
<p>
In the phase-four coronavirus relief bill, Congress should recapture these
unused visas by making them available temporarily to emergency nurses and
physicians during the coronavirus crisis.
</p>
<h2>
<strong>The urgent need for more nurses</strong>
</h2>
<p>
Before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19, the Department of Labor
<a href=”https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/perm_detail.cfm”>
identified
</a>
nursing as a “Schedule A” occupation, indicating that the United States
already faced a nursing shortage.
</p>
<p>
The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the already-existing shortage and
the consequences are all-too-painfully visible: Hospitals are being
overrun. Caseloads can be
<a
href=”https://www.stevenspointjournal.com/story/news/2020/04/21/coronavirus-wisconsin-stevens-point-nurse-volunteers-new-york/5152697002/”
>
twice
</a>
the size they are usually or worse. Nurses
<a
href=”https://www.stevenspointjournal.com/story/news/2020/04/21/coronavirus-wisconsin-stevens-point-nurse-volunteers-new-york/5152697002/”
>
describe
</a>
entire staffs “tired and worn out” and some nurses are being asked to work
even longer than twelve-hour shifts;
<a
href=”https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/07/us/detroit-nurses-sinai-grace-coronavirus/index.html”
>
24-hour shifts are not unheard of
</a>
. Nurses are comparing their work to that in a
<a
href=”https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/like-a-war-zone-michigan-icu-nurse-talks-about-13-hour-shift-with-covid-19-patients”
>
war zone
</a>
. Nurses in a
<a
href=”https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/07/us/detroit-nurses-sinai-grace-coronavirus/index.html”
>
Michigan hospital
</a>
refused to work without getting additional nurses to help.
<a
href=”https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/school-nurses-are-joining-ranks-in-testing-clinics-health-departments-to-boost-coronavirus-efforts/”
>
School nurses
</a>
and
<a
href=”https://www.npr.org/local/309/2020/03/23/820158158/how-many-retired-doctors-nurses-will-answer-pritzker-s-call-to-action”
>
retirees
</a>
are being called in as reinforcements to clinics and hospitals to fight the
pandemic.
</p>
<p>
In short, we desperately need nurses.
</p>
<p>
At the same time, thousands of nurses have been waiting to come to the
United States to help alleviate the ongoing shortage. As they are not
generally eligible for temporary worker visas, they must wait for immigrant
visas to become available. Many come from countries subject to annual caps
on immigrant visas and have been waiting for years in a growing backlog.
This sorry state of affairs was and is avoidable.
</p>
<p>
One possible solution would be a temporary change to tap into the pool of
unused visas to help alleviate the shortage in this crisis.
</p>
<h2>
<strong>Unused visas</strong>
</h2>
<p>
Thousands of visas allocated each year for various immigration categories
can go unused, often by accident when U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services and the Department of State
<a
href=”https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/cisomb_2010_annual_report_to_congress.pdf”
>
incorrectly estimate
</a>
the cutoff dates in the visa bulletin. When visas go unused, immigration
law generally attempts to “cross-allocate” them, shifting unused
employment-based visas into family-based categories for the following year
and shifting unused family-based visas into employment-based categories.
The calculation for the number of family visas
</p>
<p>
However, the unused employment visas do not get reallocated because the
family preference category is set to its minimum value whenever the
difference between the number of certain immediate relative visas and
parolees issued in the previous year and the number of unused visas is
greater than 254,000. That condition has held consistently since 2000,
meaning that for decades unused employment-based visas haven’t been
automatically recaptured. Instead, they have simply vanished.
</p>
<p>
Congress has “recaptured” some of these unused visas twice in the past.
Between the
<a
href=”https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-106publ313/pdf/PLAW-106publ313.pdf”
>
American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act
</a>
in 2000 and the 2005
<a
href=”https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-109publ13/pdf/PLAW-109publ13.pdf”
>
emergency supplemental appropriations
</a>
bill, Congress has recaptured nearly 200,000 unused visas.
</p>
<p>
Those recaptured by the 2005 bill were exclusively for nurses. Still,
through 2009, over 176,000 visas went unused and were never recaptured.
While no publicly available data exist since 2009, the years since have
doubtlessly seen additional unused visas that never were recaptured.
</p>
<p>
<strong>Unused and Recaptured Employment-Based Visas, 1992-2009</strong>
</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
Total unused employment visas, 1992-2009
</td>
<td>
506,448
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
Automatically recaptured by family-based categories
</td>
<td>
149,578
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
Recaptured by the American Competitiveness in the 21st century
Act and the 2005 supplemental
</td>
<td>
180,809
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
Unused and not recaptured
</td>
<td>
176,061
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
Note: Data only go through 2009, unfortunately. Until 2009, the State
Department published an appendix to the visa bulletin which contained more
detailed calculations and data, but since 2009 has only published the final
topline numbers. The Immigration Statistics Yearbook is incompatible with
the numerical limitations so is not useful in reconstructing post-2009
unused visa data.
</p>
<p>
With this proven tool, Congress can enhance the health care workforce in
the midst of the pandemic. Such a change is not permanent but could be
written to coincide only with the existence of the current national
emergency. Moreover, such a plan does not violate the president’s latest
executive order
<a
href=”https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/politics/immigration-executive-order-trump/index.html”
>
restricting immigration
</a>
, which exempts health care workers.
</p>
<p>
There is already bipartisan support for adding nurses and physicians and
for recapturing unused visas. The 2000 recapture was signed by President
Clinton and the 2005 recapture for nurses was signed by President Bush
(with the Heritage Foundation
<a
href=”https://www.heritage.org/immigration/report/recapturing-visas-sensible-temporary-fix-americas-foreign-worker-problem”
>
arguing at the time
</a>
that it didn’t go far enough).
</p>
<p>
Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and David Perdue of Georgia fought
to protect immigrant nurses with
<a
href=”https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/green-card-cap-legislation-remains-blocked-despite-h-1b-deal”
>
changes
</a>
to the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act. Currently, bipartisan
support for international nurses and physicians is apparent in multiple
recent letters. Perdue and Republican colleagues, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia
and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana,
<a
href=”https://www.loeffler.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/Nurse_Visa_Letter_Final_0.pdf”
>
wrote
</a>
to department heads asking them to prioritize the processing of EB-3 visas
for nurses earlier this month.
</p>
<p>
A wide-ranging group of
<a
href=”https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/1/9/1911d1dd-9420-4ca0-ba80-caf6eba93a4f/22531E5F97883A568322D0BE738578B6.414finaluscis.pdf”
>
Republicans and Democrats
</a>
from both chambers wrote to Ken Cuccinelli to express concerns over
regulations on the H-1B and J-1 visas hampering the strongest possible
medical response to COVID-19.
</p>
<p>
A new effort to recapture stray visas marries smart health care policy to
expand the supply of workers with good immigration policy that corrects
bureaucratic errors and the unintended consequences of poorly planned
immigration laws. Recapturing also respects the numerical limitation on
immigration by using visas which Congress has already allocated.
</p>
<p>
Our nurses are calling for help. We should listen.
</p>
</div>
<p>This post appeared on <a href=”https://www.niskanencenter.org/emergency-nurses-unused-visas/” target=”_blank”>the Niskanen Center</a>. Reprinted with permission.</p>

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About The Author<br/>
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<p>
<b>Jeremy L. Neufeld</b> focuses on immigration policy, specifically on temporary and immigrant visas. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, where he received a B.S. in Economics. Neufeld’s work has been published in The Hill, Morning Consult, and RealClearPolicy, and his research has been cited by outlets including Bloomberg, Slate, Vice MSNBC, The Washington Examiner, The Hill, McClatchy.
</p>

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