With a sudden shortage in the healthcare sector, this new bill is likely going to provide with 40,000 foreign visas to the medical workers to come to US.
A bipartisan group of Senators in the US have introduced legislation in Congress that allows the foreign doctors and nurses to gain visas and work permits in US to help fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, during the announcement of the bill stated saying that the immigrant doctors and nurses play a very crucial role when it comes to the healthcare system in US, especially around the medically underserved areas in the country.
Around 1/6th of the United State’s medical workforce is foreign born and there are a number of nurses who are stuck overseas because of the green card backlog along with the bureaucratic delays that the latest executive order brought along.
Many of these healthcare workers have already received their approval for coming to the US as lawful permanent residents.
Senator David Purdue, a Republican further clarified saying that this proposal would simply reallocate a limited number of unused visas in the US from some of the prior years and recruit them to help fight the battle against Covid-19.
The shortage in the healthcare workers is an alarming factor and needs immediate medical attention, without any further questions. The shortage also needs to be filled so that the existing medical workers don’t consistently feel overwhelmed because of what is going on.
Just by mid-April, over 9000 healthcare workers have contracted the Covid-19 and around 27 of them have died.
With the situations getting worse in some of the hard hit states like New York, the authorities have even called in for the retired nurses and doctors to step up as volunteers. According to the reports from the Association of Medical Colleges, around 40,000 shortage of doctors and nurses in the US needs to be filled.
In the meantime, thousands of doctors in US who are working on the temporary visas are now waiting for their permanent work permits.
Under the “Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act”, the nurses and the physicians with the immigrant visas and approved immigrant petitions will be allowed to come to the US to take up the unfilled jobs in the country.
This latest bill could likely be attached with a new round of Covid-19 rescue legislation bill that Congress could consider.
The medical professionals that are being considered under the bill will be asked to also meet the licensing agreements, pay the filing fees and clear all the security checks, the senators reported.
It is still not clear whether the thousands of the foreign nationals who have been trained as doctors currently in the US and have not completed their residency yet will be taken into consideration or not.
This new legislation has been supported by US medical professionals association including some of the leading ones like American Hospital Association, the American Organization for Nursing Leadership and Physicians for American Healthcare Access and some of the immigrant groups.
