Visa Bulletin Predictions for EB3 Philippines

Tanya Freedman, CEO Connetics USA Nursing Agency: Is there a possible retrogression in Eb three Philippines?

Atty. Mike Hammond: I don't think it's going to happen this fiscal year. But as retrogression occurs when demand exceeds the supply of the visa numbers, and there is a great demand for international workers, whether it be in healthcare or in any other space for the US. And we're still working with rules set 30,40 years ago as far as the numbers that have not really changed. And so the demand is simply going to ultimately exceed the supply. We had a short-term over the last couple of years benefit from COVID. Because unused family numbers got passed over to the employment side. So we have gotten a few extra numbers. We even got a few extra numbers for this year, not significant but several thousand which is likely going to stem things off for this fiscal year. But certainly most of us I believe, think that there will be retrogression unless there is some sort of legislative change. Chris is probably more up to speed on whether there's any potential legislative change that would strike that off. But I'm not terribly optimistic. Yeah, about legislation.

Atty. Chris Musillo: Mike's had exactly right, including the lack of optimism. There was a quiet effort in September that we didn't really want to publicize, in which Senator Durbin actually tried to get the HWRA attached to a funding bill. But as with all immigration legislation, that's pretty difficult. We did have a new US election here. I guess a few days ago, Tuesday, some of the results of that election are still undecided as they were counting ballots, I guess. The expectation is that the lower house of Congress, which we call the House of Representatives here, that will be a slightly or publican dominated body,  and the upper body, which is the US Senate, that is going to be maybe Democrat, maybe Republican, either way, it's basically going to be a 50/50, maybe 50 plus one for the Democrats. The President, of course, is still Joe Biden, he's a Democrat, and he remains in office for two more years. The general rule of thumb is if it's divided government, which is to say, we've got Republican in one of the bodies and Democrat in one of the bodies and or the presidency, that it's very tough to get legislation passed, then you layer on top of it in the US anyway, immigration legislation is always very difficult. And so we're not terribly optimistic. Having said all that, you know, you never know and I know that the industry is still committed to working on something. And we the industry will be spending the next two months the new Congress will be sworn in in January sort of coming up with a strategy for the 2023 congressional term.

Tanya: Okay, so I think that the bottom line really is we're not sure. And then you know, yes, the visas might be oversubscribed in a year or so. But right now, the doors are open. Right now the visa bulletin is open, not Mike is nodding his head. So, right now is the time that he If you're interested to come to the United States, you need to pass your NCLEX.