Bills that would allow more foreign nurses to work in the United States and make changes to the overall green-card system were approved Friday by a House panel.

The nurses bill (HR 5924) would authorize 20,000 visas per year for foreign nurses and authorize grants to U.S. nursing schools to increase their enrollment and create new training programs.

Hospitals have more than 115,000 nursing vacancies now, according to Robert Wexler, D-Fla., the sponsor of the bill, and the Department of Health and Human Services says the nation will face a shortage of more than 1 million nurses by 2020.

The Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Subcommittee approved the bill by a 7-2 vote.

Luis Gutierrez of Illinois was the sole Democrat to vote against the measure. He said he opposed granting visas to any one group of foreign workers because that undermined the case for a more comprehensive immigration overhaul.

“We give the high tech industry what they want, we give the landscapers what they want, we give the nurses what they want,” Gutierrez said. “If everybody gets their bite at the apple, there’s never going to be fair reform.”

By an 8-1 vote, the subcommittee also approved a bill that would allow unused green card allotments to roll over to subsequent years. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said the bill was necessary to account for bureaucratic mistakes made at agencies “inept at processing cases.”

“This bill does not add a single visa — it simply finds what was lost,” she said.

Steve King, R-Iowa, who cast the lone no vote, said the measure would lead to issuance of hundreds of thousands of new green cards.

“There are visa categories,” King said. “When that limit is not reached in a year, that’s the end of it — the language is clear.