The Honorable Nancy Pelosi Speaker U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Kevin McCarthy Republican Leader U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515

Dear Speaker Pelosi and Leader McCarthy:

On behalf of our nearly 5,000 member hospitals, health systems and other health care organizations, our clinician partners — including more than 270,000 affiliated physicians, 2 million nurses and other caregivers — and the 43,000 health care leaders who belong to our professional membership groups, the American Hospital Association (AHA) writes to express concern about the potential impact of H.R. 3648, the Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment (EAGLE) Act of 2022. This bill is being considered in the House Rules Committee on Dec. 5, in anticipation of a floor vote soon after. We believe this legislation would negatively impact nurse immigration, and thereby adversely affect the ability of America’s hospitals and health systems to provide care in communities across the country.

The bill eliminates the per-country cap for employment-based immigrant visas, which is a dramatic change to immigration policy and one that could have negative consequences. This includes severely limiting the future ability of foreign-trained nurses to obtain immigrant visas by increasing their wait times to five to seven years or more and eliminating their access for years beyond that, as visa applicants from certain countries would initially receive most or...

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