Obama Now Opposes

Arguing it makes absolutely no sense to import nurses, Obama said the best possible approach to meet the shortfall is to train people inside the country.

The US like most of the Western countries is faced with acute shortage of nurses and in recent years it has allowed medical personnel from India, China and Philippines to immigrate to work in hospitals.

"The notion that we would have to import nurses makes absolutely no sense," Obama told a gathering of health experts and lawmakers at a White House meeting on health care reforms yesterday.

"For people who get fired up about the immigration debate and yet don't notice that we could be training nurses right here in the United States," he said responding to an observation made by Congresswoman Lois Capps from California.

"We have a huge shortage of nurses today. Estimates are that the US will be lacking over 500,000 nurses in the next seven years," said Democratic lawmaker Capps.

Last week, a legislation was introduced in the US Congress to create a special category of nursing visas, which would facilitate much faster and easier brining of trained nurses from Asian countries like India.

(PTI)

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