This bill, known as the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act, seeks to address shortages in the U.S. healthcare sector by making available a significant number of previously unused employment-based immigrant visas. It proposes to increase the total number of employment-based visas by recapturing those that went unused between fiscal years 1992 and 2024. This initiative aims to bolster the nation's workforce, particularly in critical medical fields. The legislation specifically reserves up to 40,000 of these recaptured visas for professional nurses (25,000) and physicians (15,000), with petitions required within three years of the Act's passage. These visas will be exempt from per-country numerical limitations, allowing for a more streamlined process based on priority date. Furthermore, the bill mandates expedited processing for these petitions and applications, including premium processing without a fee, and requires an attestation that hiring foreign nurses will not displace U.S. workers.
This bill, known as the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act, seeks to address shortages in the U.S. healthcare sector by making available a significant number of previously unused employment-based immigrant visas. It proposes to increase the total number of employment-based visas by recapturing those that went unused between fiscal years 1992 and 2024. This initiative aims to bolster the nation's workforce, particularly in critical medical fields. The legislation specifically reserves up to 40,000 of these recaptured visas for professional nurses (25,000) and physicians (15,000), with petitions required within three years of the Act's passage. These visas will be exempt from per-country numerical limitations, allowing for a more streamlined process based on priority date. Furthermore, the bill mandates expedited processing for these petitions and applications, including premium processing without a fee, and requires an attestation that hiring foreign nurses will not displace U.S. workers.