Applicants with a degree in nursing will be given H1 visas permitting them to come to the United States as temporary workers, thanks to a change in Immigration and Naturalization (INS) police whereby nursing has been reclassified.

Until now, the INS did not consider nursing a “profession,” which deserves H1 visa. The new rule enables hospitals to bring in trained nurses from foreign countries.

“The new rule will help thousands of nurses to come to the United States, especially from India,” New York immigration attorney Charles Grutman, who is associated with Pilot Employment Agency II in Manhattan, noted. “The new rule allows H1 for specialty nurses, and means nurses with a degree are eligible for the visa.”

On arrival in the United States, the nurse has to pass the CGFNS exam or the state board exam before beginning work. “The good thing about the new rule is that the Visa Screen policy is waived, at least temporarily,” Grutman said, adding that the INS can change the policy at any point in time.

“I estimate that hundreds of deaths each year are due to low staffing,” said Dr. Jack Needleman, an economist at the Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of a study on staffing in hospitals.

The nation has a serious nursing shortage with 126,000 jobs—12 percent of the total—currently unfilled, the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine recently noted.

Compounding the problem is the fact that the nursing population is ageing each year, even as enrollments in nursing schools decrease. Increasing the workload of existing nurses is not a viable option—a study indicated that increasing the number of patients tended by a registered nurse from four to six will cause an 18 percent increase in mortality, and if the load is jacked up from four to eight, the mortality rate will climb to 31 percent.

The new rule is not a free pass for foreign registered nurses to enter the United States on H-1B visas, an immigration attorney pointed out. It establishes rules for the approval of registered nurses in many nursing areas, including critical care, operating room, oncology, rehabilitation and pediatric nursing, among others, he said. The Visa Screen waiver is due to a perceived conflict with the provisions of the North American Free Trade Association, and has been granted until it is resolved. This in turn means that once the conflict is resolved, the INS can re-institute Visa Screen.