|
|
|
|
| To live and work in the U.S.A. How health workers from other countries can get a job in the States |
|
||||
| Illustration by William Jacoby/PhotoDisc |
| By Anne Federwisch August 18, 1997 |
|||
??? Why
recruit outside of the United States? Like most U.S. recruiters, Cannaday is not interested in hiring new graduates outside of the country. The immigrant nurses who are recruited have specialized experience in the emergency department, operating room, and critical care that Cannaday has been unable to fill with American nurses. "We are a Level II trauma center, so I can't put a new graduate that does not have critical care skill down there to be the first person to meet the ambulance with a trauma patient," she said. ??? |
For the past year, British nurse
Naomi McDevitt, RN, has been trying to get a job in the
United States. She's a step ahead of most foreign nurses,
having already passed the NCLEX in Georgia in February,
but it could still be months before she can secure the
immigrant visa, or green card, she needs to work as a
nurse in this country. Part of the problem is the innate redtape of immigration paperwork. But the stickiness of the red tape is even more unrelenting now because of the ambiguous requirements for health professionals in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) passed in October 1996. According to Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) spokesperson Bill Strassberger the regulations confusion has altered the way visas are granted to health professionals. "The employment-based immigrant visas [green cards] for those individuals outside of the United States are on hold right now pending finalizing the guidance on how they will process those people," he said. Non-immigrant visas (H1-B and trade NAFTA visas) are only available for six-month intervals if the applicants receive a waiver of the new regulations, he said. "Right now, at this very moment, it's very difficult for health professionals to obtain visas," said Cheryl Peterson, MSN, RN, associate director of federal government relations for the American Nurses Association. According to Peterson, the stickler in the IIRIRA is a provision requiring nurses, OTs, PTs, speech therapists, medical technologists and technicians, and physician assistants to complete a three-part screening process patterned after the prescreening done since the mid-1970's to qualify foreign-educated nurses for visas. The process includes a prescreening test specific to the applicants' profession, an English proficiency test, and an investigation of their license in their home country, she said. But who does the prescreening, and what it entails still needs to be developed by regulations based on the law, Peterson said. INS's Strassberger said that no date has been set for those regulations to be completed. Until all the variables are determined, getting a visa for health professionals will remain chaotic. "Known specifically in the statute is the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) as one body that can do the credentialing on all the health professions," Peterson said. She said that CGFNS initiated the legislation. "Written into that same provision is language that says other credentialing organizations must be approved by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education." The law at this time does not include criteria for that approval. So Peterson said that technically only the CGFNS could administer the prescreening requirements right now, even if the health professional were not a nurse. The current confusion over issuing healthcare visas has upset the relative ease of hiring health professionals from Canada. "With trade NAFTA, it made it a lot easier [to hire Canadian nurses]," said Teresa Cannaday, RN, nurse recruiter for Moses Cone Health Systems in Greensboro, North Carolina. But she said the passage of the IIRIRA has again made it more complicated to hire Canadian health professionals. Trade NAFTA (TN) visas are more difficult to get because the IIRIRA requirement for prescreening of all health professionals seeking U.S. employment doesn't differentiate between trade agreement visas, such as TN visas, and other visas. Consequently, the State Department is only issuing 6-month TN visas in the United States, instead of the traditional 12-month visas, Cannaday said. Satisfying federal requirements for a visa is only part of the process foreign health professionals face when working in America. They also need to fulfill licensing requirements specific to their health profession and to the state where they want to practice. Potential immigrants use varying strategies to gather information about job prospects, licensing requirement, and visa provisions. Some, like McDevitt, contact recruiters. Some call professional organizations, such as the American Nurses Association, and some surf the Net. "In my search for jobs overseas, I went to the Yahoo search engine which directed me to the healthcare jobs available in the U.S. job bank," said Jamaican certified nurse midwife Donnette R. Marshall-Walford, RN. She said that the current hold on healthcare visas have halted her efforts in securing an American job. Naomi McDevitt also searches the East Tennessee State University College of Nursing Web site, and the Virtual Hospital ite for job listings. But she said that scrolling through listings has its limitations. "For me, it would be quite helpful to have more categories like jobs listed in areas, more information on which hospitals would accept U.K. nurses studying for the NCLEX, and those who would sponsor nurses directly, or even included some recommended agencies at the end who seem to be the most successful in placing nurses," she said. |
||
??? Other sites with more information about employment in the United States American Association for
Respiratory Care http://www.aarc.org ??? |
|||
