An E-7 visa is granted to a foreign student who obtains a nursing care worker license and gets a job.

The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced a plan to ① allow foreign students graduating from domestic universities to work in the nursing care field and ② encourage Korean nationals residing in Korea to work in the nursing care field.

As the Korean government prepares to enter a super-aging society, the demand for nursing services is rapidly increasing. However, due to the aging of domestic caregivers, the supply of caregivers is short, so it has been determined that it is necessary to expand the use of young, professional foreign workers who have acquired nursing care caregiver qualifications.

Currently, the average age of Korean caregivers is 61.7 years old. It is expected that there will be a shortage of approximately 80,000 caregivers by 2027.

Accordingly, the government decided to create a new category of ‘Nursing Caregiver’, a specific activity (E-7), that allows foreign students who graduated from domestic universities to work in the nursing care field.

The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Health and Welfare have established a pilot operation plan that will allow up to 400 people per year to acquire Specified Activities (E-7) qualifications for two years. If you obtain an E-7 visa, you can invite family from your home country to live with you in Korea.

Accordingly, foreign students who graduated from domestic universities can now obtain qualifications as nursing assistants, and from July 2024, currently enrolled foreign students will also be allowed to obtain qualifications.

Foreign students who wish to work in Korea as a nursing care worker must obtain nursing care worker qualifications and get a job at a nursing facility. You can receive a Specified Activities (E-7) visa by submitting the corresponding documents to the Immigration Office.

In addition, the Ministry of Justice plans to allow overseas Koreans (H-2) to change their status to Overseas Koreans (F-4), who can extend their stay if they acquire nursing care worker qualifications.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Welfare decided to promote the use of foreign workers, improve long-term service incentives for nursing care workers, expand the promotion system for nursing care workers, etc. to ease work burden, and also actively promote improvements in the treatment of domestic workers.

Minister of Health and Welfare Cho Kyu-hong said, “This expansion of qualifications for foreigners to acquire nursing care workers is expected to alleviate the problem of the shortage of young caregivers in long-term care facilities, and we will continue to cooperate with the Ministry of Justice on visa support in the future.”

Mary Eve of Papaya Story