THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL 22 | OCTOBER 2025 Statements or opinions expressed in the Oklahoma Bar Journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff. an explanation supported by evidence from their employer that demonstrates that, due to the principal applicant’s knowledge or experience, their loss would negatively impact projects and result in significant monetary loss or other disruption to the employer ... As an example, a principal applicant with an approved immigrant visa petition in an oversubscribed visa category or chargeability area who has lived in the United States for a considerable period of time, and has school-aged children and a mortgage, may face compelling circumstances if, due to job loss, the family may otherwise be forced to sell their home for a loss, pull the children out of school, and relocate to their home country.108 In its current form, this option is not available to most nurses because it only applies to foreign workers in E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, O-1 or L-1 status and is only available after the foreign worker already has an approved Form I-140.109 However, USCIS could add a separate eligibility category for this type of EAD specifically for nurses in F-1 student status who, due to retrogressed visa categories, are unable to continue working. Allowing nurses to take advantage of this option would serve a compelling national interest, considering the hardship that the loss of their employment status represents for medical facilities and hospitals across the country. A third option that could facilitate longer employment authorization periods for foreign nurses in the U.S. would be for USCIS to consider adding an entirely new EAD category specifically for nurses. This would require USCIS to create a new category of EADs, but it could be added to current policies and be valid for a period of two years. This is similar to the OPT STEM extension EAD, but it would be reserved only for nurses completing their OPT periods and whose employers have started the green card process but cannot secure further employment authorization for the nurses due to visa retrogression issues.110 Other options that would require either the creation of a new employment-based category just for nurses or the expansion of visa numbers under the existing EB categories would have to be accomplished through Congress. However, most legislative measures that have sought to increase the number of available visas have not received as much bipartisan support as those that propose working within the visa numbers already established by law. For example, in recent years, lawmakers have introduced a few pieces of legislation specifically aimed at addressing the nation’s shortage of health care workers. One such bill was the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act, HR6205 (HWRA), which was introduced in the House of Representatives with bipartisan co-sponsorship on Nov. 2, 2023.111 The HWRA proposed to initiate a one-time recapture of up to 40,000 employment-based visas that had been unused in prior years, with 25,000 of them going to foreign nurses and 15,000 going to foreign physicians to address current critical shortages of health care workers.112, 113 Congress approved similar recapture efforts in both 2000 and 2005.114 However, although the latest bill had decent support and did not seek to expand the number of green cards, nor did it seek to take visas from other categories, the House of Representatives failed to pass it, and it has not been reintroduced.115 Previous versions of the same bill met similar fates in both May 2020 and March 2021.116 Another bill was introduced by the Senate in 2022 – the RELIEF Act, S3721 – which sought to increase the percentage of visas allocated per country to help clear existing backlogs over the following five fiscal years. The bill was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary on March 3, 2022, and has not progressed since that time.117 CONCLUSION The nursing shortage in America requires a multifaceted approach by multiple U.S. agencies and Congress. Health care facilities across the country need workable solutions to hire and maintain a well-prepared and adequately staffed nursing workforce to care for the nation’s aging population over the coming decades. Improving and streamlining the current immigration system for foreign nurses should be embraced as part of the equation when solving the nursing shortage problem. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Diane Hernandez practices in the areas of employment-based immigration and compliance, as well as general labor and employment matters. She is committed to advocating on behalf of her clients, which range from small IT startups
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