At first glance, it seems Canadian employees of Sault, Michigan’s War Memorial Hospital have not been affected by new U.S. immigration policies.
Last week, a new Canadian hire at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital was turned away by U.S. border security officers at the Windsor-Detroit crossing.
Specifically, advanced practice nurses and nurse anesthetists no longer qualify for working visas because of President Donald Trump’s policy changes.
“So far, so good. I checked with admin and all of our nurses were accounted for today, there have been no issues,” said Tim Ellis, War Memorial Hospital marketing and community relations assistant, speaking to SooToday.
“Admin is now aware of this and we’re starting to hear more and more of this, and it sounds like it’s coming more from the Windsor border and the southern borders, but we haven’t had any issues here yet,” Ellis said.
Ellis could not confirm the number of Canadian employees at War Memorial Hospital when SooToday called Thursday.
“We certainly do have our share of Canadian workers here…I know we’ve got some techs, some nurses along the line.”
Ellis could not confirm if War Memorial Hospital employs Canadian advanced practice nurses or nurse anesthetists.
“It’s definitely something we’re keeping eyes on and ears open to, obviously keeping a close watch on this now to make sure it doesn’t start to affect anything here, and if it does, then we’ll have to deal with this as it happens.”
“Hopefully this won’t be something we have to deal with,” Ellis said.
Under the new rules, only advanced practice nurses or nurse anesthetists no longer qualify for working visas.
All other Canadian nurses working in the U.S. have non-immigrant NAFTA professional (TN) visas.
Approximately 30,000 to 40,000 Canadians-experts in their fields- work in the U.S with TN visas.
Henry Ford Hospital has many Canadian staff members, with about 25 advanced practice nurses or nurse anesthetists with TN visas.
Those nurses have been advised they need to apply for H1B visa status, which is a separate category under NAFTA for specialized employment.
Those applications can cost between $3,000 and $4,000, and the Trump policy changes could slow down the application process for six months or more.