Emergency Nurse Relief Act 2009- Update

I challenge you to tell me any other occupation that only requires an associate degree that pays as well as nursing.

Posted by: Greg Siskind | May 25, 2009 at 01:30 PM

Nurses are starting at salaries more than 50 to 75% higher than teachers for positions only requiring half the college. And jobs abound. Nurses pushing the notion that American nurses are out of work and there is no shortage did the same thing in the mid-90s when the H-2A bill was up for renewal and it was a huge mistake for which we are still paying. Shamefully, many nurses would rather perpetuate a shortage that is killing American patients rather than admit that we don't have enough nurses here and don't have the capacity to train enough in short order. And they want to kick Americans when they're down financially and already can't afford our health care by dramatically pushing up already high nursing salaries. Those costs get pushed on to the backs of Americans who already are having to shelf their health insurance because they can't feed their families. It only this were an exaggeration. Unfortunately, millions of Americans have their backs against the wall and members of one of the few occupations with healthy salaries and low unemployment want to make people with a whole lot less security subsidize their labor cartel.

Posted by: Greg Siskind | May 25, 2009 at 01:41 PM

American Nurses Association and California Nurses Association are protectionists that don't want foreign nurses because as more nurses coming in, wages will go down. Their bargaining power will lessen as well.

They kept a blind eye on the shortage by justifying that there's none. But if you look around, many hospitals and facilities are hiring, mostly night shifts and floating shifts.

A simple analogy is this. Joe the plumber would only like to work Monday to Friday from 8am to 5pm. Guess what, he can't find work because most households are empty during this period and won't allow Joe to work alone without their supervision. And here comes, Jose the immigrant...he's willing to work anytime of the day, any day of the week. He finds work because most household want their plumbing problem fixed while they're in the house, i.e. 6 pm. So Jose got a job, not Joe.

Jose adjusts to the schedule of the clients, while Joe doesn't want to get out of his comfort zone.

Posted by: Dan | May 25, 2009 at 08:48 AM

I know you are not a nurse and currently not living in the USA. I live in a community by choice where being white in the minority so I take issue with your name calling.

I would hope some great nurses would rise to the top especially from the top schools. The Philippine nurses need to raise their standards so all nursing schools have the same basic program.

I have always stated nurses should be trained for the country they choose to practice. If a nurse chooses to work in a certain country they should attend school there, that is the most rationale thing. My understanding is that if you were a fully qualified US nurse you would not be employable, shouldn't Americans enjoy the same right?

The issue of medical tourism, these hospitals have made the choice of being accountable to US Health standards by being reviewed by Joint Commission.

So Blacks who came to the USA via slavery have no right to speak on immigration? I thought on a day like today Memorial Day, we should be free to exercise our freedom of speech. I guess all the Americans who have given their lives for America only did that for Native Americans.

What agencies are recruiting and where?

Usually my daily mail would be full of letters asking me to join their agency? There would be job fair where Nurse Managers would interview people on site. Nursing Journals would be full of ads looking for nurses,

There use to be recruitment bonuses .

All these recruiting tools have gone away. I look at the stats in my local hospitals, no job openings.

As far as rural nursing, stats have shown that foreign trained nurses migrate to large cities and rarely to rural areas. I have not heard of many rural foreign employed nurses ( places like rural Maine or on Indian Reservations).

There are 500, 000 American nurses not presently working actively in nursing. Most have left due to poor working conditions, low pay, and a lack of respect. I agree that many would come back to work if the working conditions were improved.

Now, I have actually talked with some of my instructors who are foreign born. Studying for their NCLEX was hard, they had to translate questions into their native language, and then back to answer. I can't imagine doing that!

Thank you for stating this. I did not want to state this because, since I am not a nurse, it would be viewed as "nurse bashing" or something.

This is definitely a factor, I agree... and I don't feel that it is a negative on USRNs for refusing to work in certain conditions since we, in America, have been conditioned to expect better than this.

However, foreign nurses are used to far worse working conditions. Here in the Philippines there are some hospitals operating with 25 - 30 patients per nurse... some even as many as 100 patients per nurse. They are paid what amounts to minimum wage.

For a foreign nurse, these conditions and pay are a vast improvement.

So yes, technically the immigrant nurses are doing the jobs that US nurses will not do.

That's just the way the world turns.

Since I am a proponent of Universal Healthcare, I also view this kind of condition as a key problem with privatized healthcare because the companies which own the hospitals are looking at ways to increase the bottom line and reduced staffing is one of the most effective ways to increase profits.

Some of the comments from these lawyers are incredibly offensive. They really seem to believe that nurses are overpaid for what we do and that the solution is to bring in as many foreign nurses as possible and lower our wages to the minimum. They believe that this is the way to reduce the cost of health care.