Originally Posted by lizz
I see your point here but anything that increases the labor supply is probably going impact wages to some extent. Increased labor supply can drive down wages. While the wages in those areas are high, the argument could be made that wages might be
higher if foreign nurses weren't added to the labor pool.
That just isn't a concern when there is such a shortage or we would also be complaining about nursing students (because when they graduate there will be more nurses right?). That argument taken to the extreme would mean we would want as many nurses to get out of nursing as possible, and that would just be stupid on our parts. I might wind up getting paid more, but I don't want to look after 20 critically ill patients to do it
If we didn't have those foreign nurses, we would have to shut down half the hospitals in California. By law employers are required to pay foreign born and American nurses the same. Thanks to the new immigration requirements, those foreigners have to come here with greencards (except Canadians). That means they aren't tied to their employer and don't have to tolerate low pay or bad treatment which used to be why people claimed they drove wages down.
In my experience, the pay and conditions a nurse is willing to tolerate have nothing to do with citizenship. In fact, some American nurses are probably more likely to accept substandard pay because they are tied to a certain geographical area due to their families, which usually isn't the case with foreign nurses.
Would you like to comment?
Thank you for making that point.
