Foreign-educated nurses are poised to “help fill the gaps in care that will soon become chasms,” writes 60 Plus president Saul Anuzis in a new opinion piece.
Anuzis notes that according to estimates, “by 2025, the U.S. will experience a shortage of up to 450,000 nurses — up to 20% of the entire workforce.”
While foreign-educated nurses could be invaluable in addressing this issue, Anuzis writes that earlier this year, “the State Department announced that nearly all eligible green cards had been filled, and only workers who had applied prior to June 1, 2022, would be able to continue with the visa process.”
As a result, “[t]housands of highly trained nurses are unable to enter the country for no reason other than administrative red tape.”
Anuzis argues that a commonsense solution would recapture unused visas from previous years and re-allocate them to “industries that severely lack resources necessary to operate at full capacity” – including the health car sector. Such a policy would help ensure American patients receive the adequate care they deserve.
Read Anuzis’s full opinion piece in The Well News here.