President Duterte Ends Ban on Deploying Healthcare Workers

An announcement was made last week that President Duterte of the Philippines ended his April ban on deploying healthcare workers overseas. However, the cap of 5,000 workers deploying per year is still in effect. This is a considerable reduction from the number of healthcare workers typically deployed in a given year. In 2019, the Philippines exported 17,000 healthcare workers around the world.

Meanwhile in the U.S., visa allotment reset at the beginning of the the new federal fiscal year in October. As of October, the visa bulletin for EB-3 visas is current for the Philippines. While this is wonderful news for the many nurses who were waiting for their priority date to become current, and is great news for the many nurses ready to file their I-140 and I-485, the U.S. is now competing for fewer nurses allowed to migrate from the Philippines.

As of today, HealthStar has only seen a delay for nurses who are at the Embassy stage of the immigration process. Within the last week, however, we’ve seen forward movement for nurses stalled the last few months. We’re hopeful that the Philippines ban release in addition to the U.S. visa release will benefit our current clients with nurses at the end of the immigration pipeline. Meanwhile, initial processing continues to progress with very little delays for nurses at the beginning of their immigration journey.