Immigrant Nurse Visas Backlog 2022 Updates

Tanya Freedman, CEO Connetics USA International Nursing Agency: My PD is the 6th of September 2022. But still, my petition has not moved to the National Visa Center. Do you have any idea of what's going on at the USCIS?

Because this is very frustrating. We have even some nurses who've had earlier priority dates where the cases have not moved to the National Visa Center. And I know there wasn't an issue earlier in the Texas service center. So what to do in this kind of circumstance?

Atty. Chris Musillo: There's nothing the nurse can really do. There's very little the attorney or the employer can do but there is a little bit that they can do. Which is if the employer and the lawyer notice that the case is just stuck, as Mike says it takes a lot to get those cases stuck. They do get unstuck. It just takes a while, you know. So one, there are two basic concepts that we use first, if the case was filed premium processing, we will try to email the premium processing service to make sure that the case was moved from the Texas service center or for that matter, any other service center to the National Visa Center.

So, that's one idea and that's usually Before we start, and sometimes the premium processing center is helpful. And other times I just simply say, well, we send it to the National Visa Center and we're moving on. Increase in the NVC are harder, which is why we are the second usual attack that we will take is if the employer Ken has contracts with their local congressional office, if the congressional office puts in a call that usually gets people at the USCIS and or the National Visa Center to lean forward and look for the case, they're not going to move immediately. But that sometimes helps nudge the case along. So those are two tactics that we might use in a situation like that.

Tanya: Just one thing, also clear, we did have some cases with one of our clients. And this is just heartbreaking to me, because I know we've had some nurses who are just so frustrated where they get stuck at it, you know, it's an issue on the government side. And one other thing, also that we have done successfully at Connetics is to work with the hospitals' government affairs department, and working with the current local congressmen or senators' office, and they can flag the cases and get those cases unstuck, as Chris has said, work with you guys on that.

As Chris said, this is incredibly frustrating, especially when you see some of the people that had been followed the same time as you and their cases are kind of just smoothly going through and then yours is stuck. But the good news is that it does get unstuck. It just takes time and we have to work on a lot of different avenues to try and resolve the problem.