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REP. LANTOS INTRODUCES BILL TO END RETROGRESSION
Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA) introduced a bill to relieve the nation’s nursing shortage by allotting unused visas to qualified nurses from the Philippines, India and China, thereby circumventing a backlog in visa processing. HLG strongly supports the adoption of this proposal as a short-term fix to retrogression. Five other House members have signed as co-sponsors of the legislation.
http://lantos.house.gov/hor/ca12/home.htm

AHA: CONGRESS MUST ACT TO END RETROGRESSION
In a letter to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, AHA Executive Vice President Rick Pollack urged Congress to move quickly to re-open the flow of foreign RNs into this country, saying the "change in immigration processing threatens to needlessly exacerbate" the nation's nursing shortage.
http://www.ahanews.com/ahanews/hospitalconnect/search/article.jsp?dcrpath=AHANEWS/AHANewsArticle/data/AHA_News_050110_Clampdown&domain=AHANEWS

USCIS TO SERVICE CENTERS: STOP DENYING CASES
The USCIS’s Service Center Operations Section (SCOPS) has instructed Service Centers to issue Notices of Intent to Deny (NOIDs) if a Schedule A application is missing evidence of compliance with the posting/union notification requirement contained in DOL regulations. This gives healthcare institutions and staffing agencies an opportunity to repost notices and reverses the practice of some service centers, which had been to deny the application if the posting/notification was not completed as of the date the I-140 was filed.
http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/fieldoffices/california/aboutus.htm

CALIFORNIA SERVICE CENTER ADMITS INCORRECT DENIALS
The California Service Center (CSC) has acknowledged that it has incorrectly denied many recent nurse cases on the issue of the internal posting. To remedy the situation, the CSC is requesting the files that were appealed to the Administrative Appeals Unit to be returned to the CSC to allow the CSC to issue Notices of Intent to Deny and allow the petitioner to correct the notices.
http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/fieldoffices/california/aboutus.htm

PERM AND SCHEDULE A FOR REGISTERED NURSES
ILW.com, one of the leading immigrant news websites, recently printed an article by HLG attorney Sherry Neal. Sherry’s article PERM and It’s Impact on Schedule A Cases was ILW.com’s January 20, 2005 featured article.
http://www.ilw.com/lawyers/articles/2005,0120-neal.shtm

TORONTO HEALTHCARE SEMINAR AND JOB FAIR
HLG attorneys Michael Hammond, Sherry Neal and Cindy Unkenholt will be speaking at the Healthcare Recruitment Forum in Toronto, Canada on Friday, February 4, 2005 as part of the Marskell Job Fair. The Marskell Job Fair continues throughout the weekend of February 4, 2005.
http://www.marskell.com/

MARSKELL AND HLG PARTNER ON E-TUTORIAL
Hammond Law Group, in partnership with The Marskell Group, has created an e-tutorial for foreign healthcare workers. The e-tutorial guides healthcare workers through the immigration options and criteria that are necessary to work in the U.S.
http://www.hammondlawfirm.com/marskell/

NCLEX FACT SHEET
The National Council of State Boards of Nursing has released the January 2005 fact sheet of NCLEX examination statistics. The release shows that the largest number of internationally educated test takers includes Filipinos, Canadians, Indians, South Koreans and Chinese, respectively. The NCLEX pass rate for internationally educated RN’s in 2004 was 44%.
http://www.ncsbn.org/pdfs/NCLEX_fact_sheet

VANDERBILT DEAN: NURSE SHORTAGE WILL "CRIPPLE" HEALTHCARE
In a recent US News and World Report article, Vanderbilt Associate Dean of Nursing Peter Buerhaus, an associate dean at Vanderbilt University's School of Nursing, says that nursing schools will have to increase enrollment by 40 percent annually just to compensate for retiring RNs or else the nursing shortage will "cripple" the healthcare system.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/050131/health/31nurses.b.htm

CALIFORNIA NURSES ASSOCIATION ADOPTS CODE ON INTERNATIONAL RECRUITMENT OF RNS
The California Nurses Association has adopted a Code of Practice for the Ethical Recruitment of Nurses. This Code provides recommendations and suggested guidelines for the recruitment of overseas nurses, with an emphasis on protecting the rights of nurses and promoting the safety of patients both in the U.S. and the home countries of the RNs.
http://www.calnurses.org/?Action=Content&id=608

PHILIPPINES SHUTS DOWN 23 NURSING SCHOOLS AS SUBSTANDARD
Concerned by what it called rapidly declining standards in nursing education, the Philippines government has ordered 23 institutions that offer nursing courses to close them down by the end of the school year.
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=f3kchcn3qxld0t2494mecl6ahv4n5t2