According to a State Department bulletin, until there is no permission from the US government, it will not process applications submitted after January 2002.

This means the first 60 days of waiting may stretch to three years or more.

"It's basically going to cut them off," said Charles Oppenheim, head of State Department's immigrant visa control division.

For a long time now, many recruiters have been getting nurses from the Philippines. These nurses are trained to work in the United States.

Due to these changes, the situation in the US� lack of nurses will worsen, especially if Filipino nurses start going to other countries who are also in great need of nurses.

Authorities have warned that the US would lack around 275,000 nurses in the year 2010. This number may be lessened due to technology but the increasing �aging population� would, then, be needing more nurses.

"The Philippines are(is) our major source of imported nurses, and we've been doing that at a clip of thousands a year for a while now," said health economist Len Nichols, vice president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan Washington D.C.-based think tank