Speech #1100110154

We need to devote resources to training and hiring new nursing faculty and expanding clinical space for nursing schools so they can accept more qualified students. These investments will exponentially increase the number of trained American nurses. The SchumerHutchison amendments approach to fixing our nursing shortage is to allow up to 61.000 foreign nurses to enter the country as green card holders. Importing these thousands of foreign nurses is only a bandaid solution to our projected nursing shortage of 1 million. But it is also a step that deflates any momentum towards finding real solutions for our domestic nursing crisis. We have done these nursing visa recaptures before. In fact. 2 years ago in 2005. the President signed into law a recapture of 50.000 nursing visas as part of that years Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act. Did this 2005 visa recapture stop the nursing shortage? Of course not. It was a bandaid solution.