Employment Based Green cards areprocessed by “priority date” in a FIFO (first-in, first-out) manner. A nurse’s “priority date” is established onthe day that the nurse’s immigrant visa petition is first filed. A nurse retains her priority for the rest ofher life, even if she files a later Green card case with a subsequent employer.
From 2005-2008 the industry sawmassive numbers of nursing petitions. Thesepetitions were fueled by: (a) enormous demand for foreign-trained nurses and(b)a special piece of legislation that exempted nurse green cards from theoverall green card quota in 2005-2006. The special legislation ended in 2007.
Many of these nurses received theirgreen cards and are now working in the US. However a large number of nurses did notreceive their green cards because in 2009 the demand slowed for foreign-trainednurses and because retrogression spiked.
From 2009-13 there was a paucity ofnurse immigration petitions. Starting in2013 we saw a rebound for foreign-trained nurses. Industry leaders sought out nurses withpriority dates from the 2005-2008, who had never received their US green cards. Since 2013 the industry has seenthousands of nurse’s green card petitions “re-filed” using the 2005-08 retainedpriority date.
My sense is that the population ofnurses Filipino nurses who can retain their 2005-2008 priority dates are closeto exhausted. Accordingly, I expect thatonce the Philippine EB-3 priority date Visa Bulletin reaches 2010, it willquickly accelerate through to at least 2013 and perhaps to 2015.
Nurses born in countries other thanIndia, China, or the Philippines (Rest Of World) have no visa retrogressionproblem. Green cards are being issuedfor these nurses in under one year, as demand for the Worldwide nurses has yetto impact the Visa Bulletin. Because of the calculus involved in the VisaBulletin computation, I expect the ROW EB-3 Visa Bulletin to be near “current”for the foreseeable future.