[Aaron C.]

Please keep in mind that this is my personal opinion and that is all it is. I try very hard not to let my personal opinions show in this forum or the way it operates. I will always respect your right to an opinion even if we may disagree.

I believe that importing nurses hurts EVERYONE.

Communication is A HUGE BARRIER, even if they speak English as a second language. Even if they speak it very well, if they have not been in this country for a long time, a lot of slang and verbage will be missed on them. Also, if there is an accent, that will further hinder the ability to communicate, not only with other nurses and doctors, but also with the patients and family.

Increasing work visas for foreign nurses is not the answer to the "nursing shortage".

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H1B is coming up and that was my reason for posting this.

I have a very firm and conservative stance against illegal immigration and immigration period and I get emails from Numbers USA on the topic regularly.

I'd also encourage you to take a stance against illegal immigration by joining and participating.

Vote “NO” on Any Proposal to Import
Additional Foreign Workers

U.S. workers are counting on you!

Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) is leading an effort to hotline his proposal to nearly double the importation of H-1B nonimmigrant foreign workers and to more than double the number of employment-based (EB) permanent residents admitted to the United States each year, among other things. This proposal would:

• Suppress wages in high-skill occupations;
  
• Force more highly-skilled American workers onto the unemployment rolls
  
• Further erode America’s middle class
  
• Deter American children from pursuing degrees in high-tech fields
  
• Exacerbate already rampant immigration fraud
  
• Potentially undermine national security

H-1B AND EB FOREIGN WORKERS TAKE JOBS FROM U.S. WORKERS

In 2000, the aggregate U.S. unemployment rate for computer and mathematical occupations—occupations for which employers are most likely to seek cheap labor via the quick fix of the H-1B visa—was 2.2 percent; in 2003, it was 5.5 percent; and by mid-2005, it stood at 5.8 percent. Congress responded to this rising unemployment rate by significantly increasing the number of H-1B visas available annually in 1998, 2000, and 2004, while lamenting that not enough American children are pursuing degrees in high-tech fields.

Current law allows for the admission of 65,000 H-1B specialty-occupation workers, plus an additional 20,000 foreign graduates of U.S. universities, plus an unlimited number of foreign workers for nonprofit research institutions. Another 140,000 permanent immigrant visas are available each year for EB workers and their families. In a February 2005 chat session on ft.com, Intel Corporation Chairman Craig Barrett suggested that this is not enough and proposed that “(we) should just staple a green card to every advanced degree granted to a foreign national from a U.S. university in science and engineering.”

By importing large numbers of foreign workers to fill high-tech jobs, Congress reinforces a vicious cycle: Americans—particularly minorities—are even less likely to enter these high-skill fields given big business’ well-known predilection toward hiring cheaper foreign workers. One recent study showed that, in September 2004, 70,000 black Americans trained in computer-related occupations were unemployed and that the unemployment rate in these occupations was 8.62 percent for black Americans, as compared with 3.82 percent for all U.S. workers in these fields.

H-1B AND EB FOREIGN WORKERS DEPRESS U.S. WAGES

Professor Norm Matloff of the University of California, Davis, an expert on computer industry hiring practices, reports that there are four primary ways employers profit by hiring foreign workers:

1) Employers pay foreign workers less than Americans with the same qualifications. A recent Center for Immigration Studies report bears this out: on average, labor condition applications to import H-1Bs for computer-related jobs indicated the employers’ intention to pay wages that were $13,000 less, on average, than Americans in the same occupation and state were paid.

2) With an almost limitless supply of young foreign workers available, employers can avoid hiring—or layoff—older, more experienced (i.e., more expensive) American workers.

3) Employers exploit H-1B nonimmigrants’ de facto status as indentured servants by forcing them to work longer hours than they could require of U.S. workers and avoid paying overtime.

4) The importation of foreign workers artificially swells the U.S. labor pool, thus removing any incentive employers otherwise would have to raise wages, increase benefits, or improve working conditions.

FRAUD IS RAMPANT IN THE H-1B AND EB VISA PROGRAMS

• Increasing the number of visas available in these programs will only exacerbate existing problems. A March 2006 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report documented some distressing trends regarding fraud in the EB immigrant program:
  
• The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Inspector General audited some 214,000 labor certification applications filed with DOL from January 1, 2001, through April 30, 2001. Of those applications, 54 percent (about 130,000) contained “false—possibly fraudulent—information.”
• The report documented the case of a prominent immigration attorney in the Washington, D.C. area who received as much as $21.6 million in exchange for submitting up to 2,700 fraudulent EB immigration applications between 1998 and 2002.
  
• The Office of Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS) within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has failed to implement either crucial internal control standards recommended by the GAO or fraud control best practices. In the absence of serious quality control measures, immigration fraud continues undeterred.
  
• Fraud in these foreign worker programs also compromises national security. According to FDNS, about 5,200 immigration applicants each year are identified as potential national security risks because they are listed in the Interagency Border Inspection System (IBIS) database of immigration violators and people of national security interest. Internal agency documents show that even this basic background check is not being conducted on all immigration applicants or sponsors of immigrants, so it is anyone’s guess how many aliens slipped through the system despite the fact that they present a threat to national security or are associated with terrorists.
  
• In addition, organized crime groups have utilized complicated plots to take advantage of our weak immigration security procedures. For example, they have created of shell corporations whose sole purpose is to sponsor aliens as EB immigrants, ostensibly, as those phony entities’ employees. Most disturbingly, the GAO reported that several aliens linked to a hostile foreign power’s intelligence service were found to have been employed as temporary workers at a sensitive military research facility.

In addition to being unable to effectively detect and deter immigration fraud, the DHS Inspector General reported in September 2005 that USCIS has “neither the technology nor an operational methodology” to ensure that it issues only as many H-1B visas as the law authorizes. This is why USCIS, in 2005, issued almost 7,000 more H-1B visas than are allowed by law.

The Cornyn proposal to expand the importation of foreign workers is bad economic policy, bad national security policy, and bad immigration policy.

VOTE “NO” ON IMPORTING ADDITIONAL FOREIGN WORKERS.

Again, this is just my opinion and I will not make a habit of using this forum to express my political views, however this has an impact on Nursing Jobs so I felt like it was relevant and worthy of discussion.

[MagRedC5]

I do agree with your stance against illegal immigration. Furthermore, I'm 101% for keeping english as the primary language in the USA. It infuriates me to hear a recorded telephone message with the instructions, please press 1 for english. WHAT! Anyway, that is a different soap box of mine.

On the otherhand, the USA is a melting pot of cultures. I will say I'm all in favor of legal immigration and encourage those individuals to be bi-lingual in both native tongue & english.

IMHO, the answer to the nursing shortage here at home is to increase the number of nursing programs, and encourage retention in the nursing profession in general.

[Aaron C.]

Originally Posted by MagRedC5

I do agree with your stance against illegal immigration. Furthermore, I'm 101% for keeping english as the primary language in the USA. It infuriates me to hear a recorded telephone message with the instructions, please press 1 for english. WHAT! Anyway, that is a different soap box of mine.

On the otherhand, the USA is a melting pot of cultures. I will say I'm all in favor of legal immigration and encourage those individuals to be bi-lingual in both native tongue & english.

IMHO, the answer to the nursing shortage here at home is to increase the number of nursing programs, and encourage retention in the nursing profession in general.

I totally agree with everything you said.

[Sylvia321]

I agree, importing nurses is not the answer. Increasing nursing schoold and making the profession more attractive is the key. To make it more attractive?
1) increase wages
2) attractive bennies?
3) safer staffing
4) professional recognition
5) improved work environment

the list can be long. What are the main reasons that nurses leave the profession? Correct those reasons and perhaps nurses will come.

[Maddie]

Now this particular issue gives me a rash. Here's how it affects the little person: I went to a Town Hall meeting with the CEO of the hospital I've worked for 11 years. He commented that they were looking into recruiting nurses from a certain foreign country to help with the shortage at this institution. That's when I started getting the rash. I commented that due to lack of finances, I had not been able complete my RN , a degree I've been trying to attain for the past 6 years. The hospital I work for has tuition reimbursement only. Couldn't the hospital come up with a better system to financially help employees who wanted to become RNs, I asked. He stuttered that he could do nothing about changing that policy, stated he was sorry, and went on to the next topic. Pretty damn unfair, isn't it? (scratching head)

[Sylvia321]

Originally Posted by hsieh

does california let forgien nurses sit for the nclex? if they do then i find it strange that excelsior grads can't sit for the california nclex but nurses graduated from a forgien school can.

The imported nurses are supposed to speak,read and write fluently in english. HealthStar International Inc.
The Foreign Educated professional must:

Obtain one of the following:
For RN/PT/OT: Visa Screen from CGFNS which can be obtained upon demonstration of the following:
Education is comparable to US Education
All licenses are valid and unencumbered
Unless exempt, passing scores on required English language exams
For nurses: passing scores on either the CGFNS Qualifying Exam or the National Council Licensure Exam (NCLEX-RN)
For PT only: Certificate from FCCPT (Foreign Credentialing Commission on Physical Therapy) which can be obtained upon demonstration of the following:
Education is comparable to US Education
All licenses are valid and unencumbered
Unless exempt, passing scores on required English language exams
For OT only: Visa Credential Verification Certificate (VCVC) from the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy (NBCOT) which can be obtained upon demonstration of the following:
Education is comparable to US Education
All licenses are valid and unencumbered
Unless exempt, passing scored on required English language exams
Passing scores on the Occupational Therapist Registered Certification Exam

[Sylvia321]

Originally Posted by Maddie

Now this particular issue gives me a rash. Here's how it affects the little person: I went to a Town Hall meeting with the CEO of the hospital I've worked for 11 years. He commented that they were looking into recruiting nurses from a certain foreign country to help with the shortage at this institution. That's when I started getting the rash. I commented that due to lack of finances, I had not been able complete my RN , a degree I've been trying to attain for the past 6 years. The hospital I work for has tuition reimbursement only. Couldn't the hospital come up with a better system to financially help employees who wanted to become RNs, I asked. He stuttered that he could do nothing about changing that policy, stated he was sorry, and went on to the next topic. Pretty damn unfair, isn't it? (scratching head)

That's a shame. Some of the hospitals in CA and FL were sponsoring the nursing students, some were required to work so many yrs at the facility and some weren't. I'd look elsewhere, if the place I worked cared so little. You can always call around and see if any facilities in your area do sponsor students.