The entire issue doesn't make one bit of sense. If the Philippines are already "exporting" nurses into the USA, why do the Democrats "feel the need" to amend the new bill to allow it...?
The current thinking on the subject of nurse immigration is that "nursing schools limit enrollment because they want to limit supply exactly the same way medical schools limit the supply of physicians, and for exactly the same reason, to create a shortage."
It was in June, 2005, that the AMA first recognized the physician shortage ("at least in some regions and specialties"). To rectify the problem, it declared that it would "work to develop mechanisms, including identification of funding sources, to create medical school and residency positions ..."
I'm thinking that, after they identify these funding sources, the AMA is going to somehow manage to cognize that, yes sir, only rich people can afford to send their kid to medical school, and that, yes certainly, we can trust the rich folks to skew the supply/demand in order to reap higher wages...
Waht a tasteless joke; right, we can trust these jokers to "fool around" with the gravest problems imaginable...
Maybe these aliens wouldn't be so eager to make the move if they weren't allowed to bring their entire extended family with them...
How does it make any sense that if a foreign national marries a citizen, than he/she can bring the entire "boatload" along for the ride? And if indeed by chance that's not how the law reads, in practice it works the same way. An elderly "second aunt" is granted a visitors visa, and that's the last time she ever appears on radar...
Maybe the Gov. can move some of the relatives of aliens off the welfare roles and into nursing school...

What was interesting in the NYT article (yet not surprising) was their focus on the effect that the exodus of nurses and doctors is having on their home countries. When 150,000 qualified Americans are turned away from nursing schools annually because of overcrowding, Congress should be appropriating funds for more training. The problem (paucity of professors due to inadequate pay) is growing in other professions (like engineering) as well. How are poor and middle class Americans to support themselves in George H.W. Bush's "new world order"?

Republicans have been trying to destroy public education for over thirty years, by cutting budgets and passing the buck around from federal to state, until only those with money can get their children a solid basic education from which they can study further and build a worthwhile career and life on.

The cover story on Time magazine's April 17, 2006 issue was "Drop Out Nation" - 30% of America's high school students won't be graduating. Newt Gingrich's plan is for Americans to be the "investor class" of the world - Those of us with wealth (damned few) will reap the benefits (dividend checks) of the labor and sweat of the few that can find what work there is that requires little or no training (and pays less), just a strong back. All others are what? In prisons, on the streets, commiting suicide?

We're about to experience a train wreck, and nobody who is in a position to do anything to stop it is doing anything to stop it.

That is so true, Michael. When you bring in 5 foreign nurses, you're actually bringing in all their nuclear family to the US. Maybe those concerned with the social cost of hosting entire clans of immigrants should look closer at this angle. It is precisely because nurses, or any other professional for that matter, can eventually bring with them their families that's making the prospect of migrating to the US more attractive.