HENRY FORD HOSPITAL VS . NAFTA
vs.
Health care is now inextricably wound into the fabric of government. Even NAFTA's recision effects the availabllity of skilled health care professionals. It goes something like this.
President Donald Trump's dislike of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is starting to affect the workforce in United States hospitals that rely on specialized nurses from Canada and Mexico to fill critical positions.
Under NAFTA, Canadian and Mexican registered nurses have for decades practiced in the United States on nonimmigrant professional TN visas, and each day many Canadian registered nurses (RNs) cross the border to work in US hospitals.
But under recent stricter interpretations by US Customs and Border Protection (CPB), advanced practice nurses and advanced clinical nurse practitioners are no longer eligible to work under the old RN category and must now apply for H-1B visas. The latter cover specialized positions for foreign workers from any country and can cost several thousand dollars per applicant for expedited processing.
Last week, a Canadian nurse practitioner working at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, was denied renewal of her TN visa. "She was told by CBP that the reason for the denial was a change in interpretation of NAFTA and that advanced practice nurses, in their opinion, no longer qualified under the NAFTA registered nurse category," said immigration lawyer Marc Topoleski, who represents Henry Ford Hospital, at a March 16 new conference. (Holy Moses, Batman !). Nurse practitioners are no longer categorized as R.N.s. Who makes that kind of decision ? Is it a fear of terror, or something else even more insidious and dark ? Did some negative factor for this particular person appear suspicious. In fact this policy has not been made official nor appear in any written policy documents.
The process could take as long as 3-4 weeks.
From left: Patti Kunkel, nurse practitioner, Henry Ford Health System; Marc Topoleski, principal attorney of business immigration services, Ellis Porter; Kathy Macki, vice president of human resources, Henry Ford Health System. (Dana Afana | MLive.com) (Dana Afana | MLive.com)
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