***UPDATED VEP INSTRUCTIONS SAIPAN (COMMONWEALTH OF THE NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS - CNMI)

A. one month or more before exam date, fax the following to (670) 664-3190 or scan and send to VEPInfo@cnmi-gov.net :
1. ATT first page
2. NBI clearance at least 6 months
3. passport (photo/name/signature page)
4. booking certificate/travel itinerary from airline office or travel agency (no plane ticket yet).
5. letter-request to Director of Immigration, CNMI.

Write the following:
a. you'll take nclex in saipan, write date of exam, you are requesting for VEP.
b. your full name, complete address, phone number (put Philippines country code)
c. your e-mail address (very important -- you'll receive VEP thru e-mail, so make sure email address is correct)
d. passport number
e. your signature

B. call (670) 236-0922 or 23 or send email to check if your fax or email was received, then wait for reply. There's no fee for VEP.
C. You will receive VEP thru email one month or less before exam date. VEP validity is one month.
D. If you have VEP, you can purchase airplane ticket to Saipan (thru Continental Airlines or your travel agent).
E. Contact Continental Airlines - Makati office (8188701 to 05)
F. Time difference (Saipan time is 2 hours ahead of Philippine time, same day)G. Any companion must have VEP also.
H. If passenger has a valid US visa, then VEP is not required to enter Saipan.
I. Bring 2 photocopies each of ATT and VEP to Saipan. Immigration officer might ask for a copy of each.

Updates on Visa Bulletin

Number 108
Volume IX
Washington, D.C.

UPDATE ON JULY VISA AVAILABILITY
The sudden backlog reduction efforts by Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices during the past month have resulted in the use of almost 60,000 Employment numbers. As a result of this unexpected action it has been necessary to make immediate adjustments to several previously announced cut-off dates. All Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices have been notified of the following:
Effective Monday July 2, 2007 there will be no further authorizations in response to requests for Employment-based preference cases. All numbers available to these categories under the FY-2007 annual numerical limitation have been made available. Employment preference numbers will once again be available to these chargeability areas beginning October 1, 2007, under the FY-2008 annual numerical limitation.
Department of State Publication 9514
CA/VO: July 2, 2007

List of NON-CGFNS States

As tackled in an earlier article, several states have removed the requirement of taking CGFNS qualifying exams (Certification Program) prior to being made eligible to sit for the NCLEX-RN® examination.
Non-CGFNS states include:
1. CALIFORNIA

2. ARIZONA

3. OHIO

4. NEW YORK

5. MARYLAND

6. GEORGIA

7. FLORIDA

8. ILLINOIS

9. SOUTH CAROLINA

10.HAWAII

11.NEW MEXICO

12. VERMONT

13.OREGON

14. NEVADA

15. COLORADO

16. KANSAS

17. TEXAS

18. MINNESOTA

19. ARKANSAS

20. SOUTH CAROLINA

21. KENTUCKY

22. NEW JERSEY

23. MICHIGAN (effective July 2007)
A chart released by the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) showing CGFNS certification program (qualifying exam) requirements by each State Board of Nursing as is available here. The chart lists information gathered by CGFNS as of February 28, 2005.
For a complete list of State Boards of Nursing and their corresponding website addresses, visit the NCSBN website.

courtesy of Lyle Santos's Blog

NCLEX in MANILA

Pop the champagne and pray in thanksgiving. The Philippine bid to hold the US nursing licensure exam in Manila succeeded. Filipino nurses who wish to work in America no longer must travel abroad, burning hundreds of dollars, just to take the NCLEX (Nursing Council Licensure Examination). They can do it in Manila starting mid-2007.

The good news came Thursday evening as the exhausted delegation from Manila, led by Commission on Filipinos Overseas head Dante Ang, was about to sup. President Faith Fields of the US National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), as NCLEX overseer, announced a unanimous decision. It capped two hours of grilling earlier on Philippine assurances of exam security and housecleaning after fraud marred its own nursing board tests last June.
Ang quickly informed President Arroyo of the event. Manila news outlets called to confirm. The persistence of Filipinos on both sides of the Pacific finally paid off. The first step to nursing job placement in America will now be cut in cost by at least half.
The Philippine Nurses Association in America (PNAA) first broached the idea in 2002 of NCLEX locating in Manila. The NCSBN at that time was mulling to open the licensing test outside the US and its territories in two years. For PNAA past president Filipinas Lowery and present president Rosario May Mayor, it was only logical that Manila be among the pilot areas. After all, Filipinos have always formed the bulk of examinees — over 9,000 or 35 percent per year in the 1990s. (That figure jumped to more than 15,000 or 60 percent last year.) The closest and thus cheapest to reach test site back then was Saipan, for which examinees had to pay $200 exam fee and $600 for fare, food and lodging. Locating the exam in Manila would mean paying only the basic $200-fee plus $150 for foreign processing, but no more overseas travel. They would be able to use the savings to review.
All easier said than done, though. Too frequent were reports of coups and kidnappings in Manila, making the NCSBN hesitant. Software piracy was also rampant, worrying NCLEX examiners about tricksters simply memorizing their questions to transform into nursing school lectures.

In Mar. 2005 Ang joined the NCLEX effort, raising it to an official venture with the PNAA and the Philippine Nurses Association in the homeland. He got the US embassy and American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines to support the Manila testing location. NCSBN officials were invited to Manila for a first-hand look at facilities, physical and software security, and Filipino nursing life. They saw that not only the US Medical Licensing Examination was being given trouble-free in Manila, but also the CGFNS (Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools) tests to qualify for the NCLEX. Most telling was the work ethics of Filipino nurses, the reason they comprise 83 percent of foreign nurses in America and are the most preferred by hospitals, doctors’ clinics and care homes.
For good measure, Ang suggested to President Arroyo the formation of an inter-agency Task Force-NCLEX, consisting of his CFO, and reps from the PNA, the Professional Regulatory Commission’s Board of Nursing, the labor office, NBI or PNP, and association of nursing school deans.
The group had just been formed on July 31, 2006, when news broke that the nursing board test of the previous month was marked by question leakage. To make matters worse, at least two nursing board members and PNA officers who owned review centers were implicated.
The exam fraud was but a part of the bigger problem of nursing. There was also the issue of poor education. Schools, cashing in on a surge of enrolments from news of a nurse shortage in America, were churning out 80,000 or so grads per year. But only 32,000 or so are able to pass the board test, and only 2,000 easily get jobs in top hospitals.
A second NCSBN visiting group in Oct. 2006, led by president Fields, became all the more worried about NCLEX security and quality of examinees coming from diploma mills. By Dec. the US board decided to open six more testing sites outside the US: Taiwan, Mexico, India, Canada, Australia and Germany. Again, Manila was scratched from the list.
Ang refused to give up. He was fighting against the PRC for a total retake by June examinees, and was being vilified in the press for it. But he pressed on, promising the NCSBN that the Task Force-NCLEX would help solve the problem of exam fraud and education standards. Last Thursday, on the NCSBN’s invitation, Ang presented the accomplishments: NBI probe and indictment of at least 13 exam leaks and cohorts, replacement of all BON members, PRC supervision by the labor department, and review of the nursing curriculum to suit US standards.
Pearson-VUE, the company that actually handles the NCLEX outside America, made an extra pitch. Fraser Cargill, as Asia-Pacific director, said that if anyone has to worry about exam and physical security, it’s him. Yet his firm gives out three other international tests in the Philippines, including supposedly deadly Mindanao, and has had no hitches. Cargill added that only in the Philippines is his work being made easier by a Task Force that reports directly to the President. It was thus that he gave an estimate of three months max to set up the first NCLEX test site in Manila.

Take a bow, gentlemen and ladies.

JUNE 07 NLE RESULTS

’07 Nursing Board Results out in August
By Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net
Last updated 05:57pm (Mla time) 06/29/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- The results of the June 2007 nursing licensure examinations will be released in August, or a month later than the results of past tests have been, a member of the Board of Nursing (BoN) said Friday.“The release of the June 2007 nursing licensure examination results will be out by August 15 or 17 up to 31 at the Professional Regulation Commission office in Manila,” Marco Sto. Tomas of the BoN, which prepares and oversees the entire exam process, said.He explained that the month’s delay is primarily due to the volume of examinees this year.Some 78,000 nursing graduates took the June 10 and 11 exams, almost double the usual 40,000 examinees. Among them were some 13,000 passers of the June 2006 exam who retook tests 3 and 5 again on the recommendation of the United States Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS).The June 2006 nursing board exam was marred by the leak of test questions to some review centers. This controversy spurred congressional and criminal investigations, court cases, the replacement of the BoN members, and even a visit of CGFNS lawyers to observe this year’s board exam, as well as the preparations for it.Sto. Tomas said the PRC's three optical machine readers, which can read and correct only 10,000 test papers a day, will take longer to come with the scores.“We hope and pray that none will conk out [during the correction],” he said.After the scores are known, the test papers will have to be matched to the examinees because “the test papers do not contain the names of the examinees, just their assigned numbers,” Sto. Tomas explained.Then, the BoN will have to establish the mean passing score, which is computed from the highest and lowest scores.Sto. Tomas said the BoN members will again go into isolation once the test papers are being corrected. At the moment, they are still preparing the answers.He said this second period of isolation is to prevent the possibility of any of them being influenced to change the results of the exam in favor of selected examinees.The BoN went incommunicado during the printing of the test questions, to dispel any suspicion they might leak out the test questions.“Everything is being done to restore the integrity of the Philippine nursing licensure examinations. This exam is not the work of any one member of the board, but all of the board,” he said.