HR personnel, in-house legal counsel, department chairs, and other medical industry decision makers are buried under a flood of information.  Professional journals, e-mail, newsletters, and text messaging are overwhelming all of us.  How many of us have a stack of professional journals and other updates sitting on the corner of our desk, chock full of information, which we will never get to, because of job pressures and time constraints?  It is nearly impossible to stay current on primary professional areas of focus, let alone staying informed on important, yet issues of secondary focus, such as immigration policy that will affect your ability to find, recruit, and hire the foreign medical personnel needed to keep your institution vibrant and competitive. 
 
To balance the need for timely information against time constraints, Shumaker Williams, P.C. is publishing our new newsletter Medical Immigration Quarterly.  The focus of this newsletter is to provide you with concise, information on medical immigration developments in an easily digestible form.  Think of it as the "USA Today" of medical immigration updates.  As such, in contrast to other legal updates that are chock full of case citations, long-winded analysis, and an apparent effort to fill minimum word-length requirements, the goal of this newsletter is to get you the essential information you need at a glance, recognizing that if the topic is of relevance to you at any given time, you can reach out to us for more in depth analysis. 

 
J-1 Waivers Season for Doctors is here
 
The start of the federal fiscal year on October 1, 2008 is a good time to begin the process for seeking a waiver of the two year home residency requirement that often applies to physicians in the USA on a J-1 exchange visa.  Doctors seeking such a waiver should build a 6-9 month window into their planning process to avoid reaching the end of their visa period without a decision on their waiver case.  For employers, this process may enable them to retain a graduating resident on staff as an H-1B visa holder.

 

Don't Forget those I-9s
 
There is a big push underway by the current Administration to replace the current I-9 based hiring system with an electronic system called e-verify.  Until that occurs, however, remember to keep your I-9 files current.  One frequent oversight is the failure to update the I-9 when a visa holding physician (H-1B for example) receives their legal permanent residency (green card).  That positive development causes a secondary consequence, where the I-9 form originally completed for the foreign medical employee is no longer accurate, as it cites a now defunct H-1B visa as the documentary basis for employment.  When your foreign medical employee receives their green card, remember to update their I-9 form to reflect that change.
 
Yes, There's Still a Nursing Shortage
 
Congress has been asleep on the nursing shortage issue for the past year, failing to renew the (Schedule A) program that permits foreign nurses to obtain Legal Permanent Residency (Green Card) without a labor certification or being wait-listed.  Congress may be waking up, however, as the only immigration bill pending with bi-partisan support in the current Congress is H.R. 5924, to provide 20,000 new visas per year for foreign nurses.  Future issues of Medical Immigration Quarterly will let you know if Congress delivers on this bill or hits the snooze button again.
 

Future Trends
 
2008 has been a quiet year for any new immigration legislation, including attempts to provide more allotments of H-1B visas or green cards.  Election year politics within Congress has resulted in any positive proposed legislation on the business/medical visa front becoming bogged down with anti-immigration enforcement amendments.  The end result is no progress as the bills die under their own weight.  This situation is likely not going to change under the current Congress with expectations being that a new approach to comprehensive immigration reform, including lifting the tight caps on numbers of visas and green cards will likely not occur until late Spring/early Summer 2009 after a new Congress is sworn in January 2009.