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2004 News and Alerts Due to the age of these news items, information (including links) may be outdated. Please use the search feature at the top of the page to find more current information on the subject or to find a current link. DECEMBER 17, 2004 Visa issuance slowdown begins January 2005 for Philippine, Indian and Chinese nurses The U.S. State Department recently announced that beginning in January, 2005, EB-3 immigrant visas would be available only to those nurses whose visa cases had a priority date earlier than January 1, 2002. The new visa-issuance rules do not mean that visa issuance to Philippine, Indian and Chinese health care workers (primarily nurses) will stop in January. It does mean, however, that the pace of visa issuance to nurses and other health care workers from these countries will slow down substantially for a period of time. Visas will be issued to applicants whose priority date is earlier than January 1, 2002; issuance to applicants whose priority date is after January 1, 2002, will be temporarily put on hold. Retrogression is the technical term for this process of slowing the rate of visa issuance. This change is not the result of a change in policy, or of a discretionary decision by the U.S. Government; the change is required by the numerical limits on visa issuance that have been part of U.S. immigration law for decades. CGFNS had nothing to do with this decision, and has no legal or practical ability to affect these visa issuance rules in any way. Here is what recently happened: in the fall of 2004, the State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) discovered that USCIS’s campaign to process and (where appropriate) approve large numbers of employment-based immigration cases (to reduce its backlogs) had been very successful. USCIS had processed and approved so many of these employment-based cases (including nurses and other health care workers) that the number of approved I-140 petitions for Philippine, Indian and Chinese citizens could not be accommodated by the number of visas currently available for issuance to persons born in those countries. The number of visas issued to citizens of those countries therefore had to be rationed — apportioned according to rules established in U.S. immigration law to ensure that no one country used a disproportionate portion of all visas available worldwide. (Other countries were not affected because the overall level of immigration to the United States is so high in each of these three countries that they have reached their numerical limit, while other countries have not.) These apportionment rules require that those I-140 petitions with earlier priority dates (normally the date of filing) shall be issued visas before those with later priority dates. The priority dates are used to create a queue, or a waiting line. As each visa is issued to a person with an earlier priority date, the next person moves forward in the waiting line. In this case, when visas have been issued to all qualified applicants with priority dates before January 1, 2002, then the cut-off date will gradually be moved forward. In February or March of 2005, for example, the cut-off date might be moved forward (by the State Department) to February 1, 2002, so that persons with priority dates before that cut-off date would then become eligible for visas. A new cut-off date for the EB-3 visa category will be announced each month in the State Department’s monthly Visa Bulletin. It is not possible at this time to tell how fast the cut-off date will move (there is a small chance that it might briefly move backward), and thus how soon someone with a priority date later than January 1, 2002, will become eligible for issuance of an EB-3 immigrant visa is unknown. Each month, the State Department will count the number of qualified cases and the number of available visas, and will then decide at what date to set the cut-off date. The State Department Visa Bulletin can be accessed via the following link: http://travel.state.gov/visa/frvi_bulletincurrent.html. It is also not possible at this time to tell how long this period of slowed or rationed immigrant visa issuance will continue. CGFNS is aware that efforts will be made in the next Congress to improve this situation by legislation. A previous Congressional effort to avoid rationing of employment-based visas to high-demand countries was successful in 2001. If Congress acts at all, however, it is unlikely that it will act before April of 2005. Embassy of the United States in Manila Fact Sheet — Click here. FEBRAURY 25, 2005 — Bridging the New Reality of Retrogression Visa issuance slowdown for health care workers from the Philippines, India, and China The Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) is aware of the affect the retrogression announcement has had on the visa processing for health care workers and we are expediting the processing of applicants for whom the retrogression deadline is imminent. CGFNS will do its best to expedite issuance of the VisaScreen® certificate for any Philippines, Indian or Chinese EB-3 cases who had a visa appointment for December or even January, either abroad or in the US, if we have already received all of the required documentation and the file is ready for review by today, Friday, December 17, 2004. Please contact us with your name, birth date and CGFNS/ICHP identification number. To expedite the processing and delivery of VisaScreen® certificates please specify the date and place of the interview, and provide CGFNS with any special instructions about to whom the certificate should be mailed. That information should be provided to Amos Sydnor the Manager of VisaScreen®. CGFNS is an immigration-neutral, nonprofit organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and is an internationally recognized authority on the education, registration and licensure of nurses worldwide. CGFNS’s mission is to provide responsible leadership in the delivery of relevant services to the global nursing and health care community. The organization was founded in 1977 through a collaborative effort by representatives from the U.S. Department of Labor; Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now the Department of Health and Human Services); the Immigration and Naturalization Service; and representatives from nursing organizations, including the American Nurses Association and the National League for Nursing. For additional information about CGFNS and its services, contact: CGFNS International, 3600 Market Street, Suite 400, Philadelphia, PA 19104-2651 USA; telephone: +1 (215) 349 8767; fax: +1 (215) 349 0026. |
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