Importing nurses from the Phillipines

semstr · Oct 4, 2002

We have nurses here from all over the world, including Philipino nurses. I worked with a lot of them, there is a philipino nurse on every ward here, some were ok and some weren't. Hey, isn't that normal?

My Dutch or Austrian collegues aren't so great sometimes, I am not always very nice to work with.

What I think most important is the language though, no matter what, all foreign nurses should know the language of the country they are going to.

Take care, Renee

PS: I don't like it, when "foreigners" are bashing each other about their English knowledges, it is pretty laughable!

-jt · Oct 4, 2002

It is now. But a few years ago, the Phillipines had a surplus of nurses & encouraged Western countries to come in for overseas recruitment. After something like 20 yrs of this, they are facing their own shortage now - mostly of experienced nurses & they are having trouble graduating enough new nurses fast enough to fill the void. They cant keep up with drain from the all the recruiting, yet the West is not backing off its recruitment efforts there, even though it has been asked to by Phillipine officials.

Excerpt from June 27, 2001 Congressional Testimony by the ANA on the subject:

"Immigration

The ANA and I have deep concerns about the use of immigration as a means to address the emerging nursing shortage. As you are well aware, Chairman Durbin, immigration is the standard "answer" proposed by employers who have difficulty attracting American nurses to work in their facilities. We have been down this road many times before without success. There are a number of problems with increasing the immigration of foreign-trained nurses, following are just a few issues:

The influx of foreign-trained nurses only serves to further delay debate and action on the serious workplace issues that continue to drive American nurses away from the profession. As I mentioned earlier, a Presidential task force called to investigate the last major nursing shortage developed a list of recommendations. These 16 recommendations, released in December, 1988, are still very relevant today - they include issues such as the need to adopt innovative nurse staffing patterns, the need to collect better data about the economic contribution that nurses make to employing organizations, the need for nurse participation in the governance and administration of health care facilities, and the need for increased scholarships and loan repayment programs for nursing students. Perhaps if these recommendations were ever implemented we would not be here today. Certainly, we will be here in the future if they are ignored.

There are serious ethical questions about recruiting nurses from other countries when there is a world-wide shortage of nurses. The removal of foreign-trained nurses from areas such as South Africa, India, and the Caribbean deprives their home countries of highly trained health care practitioners upon whose skills and talents their countries heavily rely.

In addition, immigrant nurses are too often exploited because employers know that fears of retaliation will keep them from speaking up. There are numerous, disturbing examples from our experience with the expired H-1A nurse visa. In fact, several cases came from Illinois. The INS Chicago District issued a $1.29 million fine against FHC Enterprises, Inc. for 645 immigration document violations. FHC, Inc. fraudulently obtained 225 H-1A visas which were used to employ Filipino nurses as lower-paid nurse aides ($6.50 per hour) instead of as registered nurses ($12.50 per hour). The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago agreed to pay $50,000 in fines and $384,700 in back wages to 99 Filipino nurses who were underpaid. In Kansas, 66 Filipino nurses were awarded $2.1 million to settle a discrimination case in which the Filipino nurses were not paid the same wage rate as U.S.-born registered nurses at the same facility. These are just a few of the cases that have come to light over the last decade........"

http://nursingworld.org/gova/federal/legis/testimon/2001/govaref.htm

apols_uk · Oct 4, 2002

thats what scares me to enter american soils. here in england foreign or not you are paid the same according to grading.

we have a union here that protects us. i am about to work in california after passing me nclex but i declined after hearing those horrable stories.

EXOTIC NURSE, RN · Oct 5, 2002

jt that is very interesting .....I know for a fact when I made the statement about the fillipino nurses having a hard way to go here in America that was exactly what I was talking about....I have seen it happen to many times to them and it was very distressing to know. Although I do not agree to recruit foreign nurses to fill the void I think AMerica need to re evaluate the nursing profession and make it desirable fOr AMerican Nurses to want to stay in the field...but that is neither here nor there at this point.

-jt · Oct 5, 2002

Thats the way it is supposed to be here too. Employers will try to get away whatever you let them get away with but the laws & the union protects you. The foreign nurses above who were compensated are just a small sample of those who reported their employers illegal activity, put a stop to it, & got back what was owed to them because they used the laws that are here to protect them & they didnt just stand by timidly & allow themselves to be taken advantage of. Just know your rights & dont let anyone walk all over you.

tiger · Oct 5, 2002

i work with alot of filipino nurses here in vegas. on my unit (day shift) there are 5 full time filipino rns, one full time filipino lpn, one full time filipino cna, 1 fulltime filipino unit sec. and one perdium filipino rn. and these people i mean immigrated here in their adult yrs. other than this staff we have one vietnamese rn(not sure when she came here but was not born here), and the rest were born here. the rest include 3 full time rn, one perdium rn, 4 lpn, and a unit sec. we have recentley gotten a new manager that is filipino. i really like almost everyone i work with. i think the filipino staff is educated, hardworking, and fun. i'm not saying i agree that usa should be recruiting these nurses from their country instead of fixing the problems we nurses have here but just wanted to say that none of the filipino people i work with have difficulty communicating or performing their job. except the manager lol. that is a whole nuther story. and when push comes to shove they will stand up for their rights and speak up for others . we are all union here. the filipinos think it is funny that i had never heard of the phillipines prior to coming to vegas. i was in my early 20s and from a small town of 1400 people in tx. i told them after knowing them awhile and finding out about them that i guess i just assumed they were chinese when i first started to work with them. never really thought about it at the time. anyways, please noone take this post as prejudicial in any way. i love all my co-workers(except a couple i detest, having nothing to do with race or culture). :)

tonicareer · Oct 5, 2002

I just don't like seeing foreign people being brought here and taxpayer money or hospital profit being used to train them thru scholarships and living expenses. Why not help Americans get training? (not happening where I live) Seems to me our history is full of foreign people being brought here as cheap labor. Even during colonial times there were indentured servants. Now if some one already had training or comes here and pays for it themselves thats different.

tiger · Oct 5, 2002

the nurses in know did already have training. as someone already said, many had a bsn prior to coming here. i personally know some who worked as cnas until they passed the boards here. english is a required second language throughout school in the philipines. also know a couple who passed lpn/ but not rn boards and are now working as lpns even though in the philipines they have a bsn. i'm sure there are programs paying for expenses for some nurses, but not nearly all.

-jt · Oct 5, 2002

?????

The 'foreign people' being recruited from the Phillipines for nursing postions in the US already are RNs. Most, if not all, already have BSNs.

I dont know where you heard that taxpayer money is being used to bring over 'foreigners' to become nurses at our expense. I think something is being misunderstood somewhere along the line.

-jt · Oct 5, 2002

Then you need to contact your state legislators and ask them why its not happening where you live. Also, your state nurses association probably has something in the works on financial support for nursing students in the state legislature. You might want to contact them & see how you can help get it passed.

And if you want to 'help Americans get trained', you should know that that help is available by law now but its implementation is being held up at the moment by Congress. You need to contact your Congressman & Senator & tell them to appropriate the $250 million to the Nurse Reinvestment Act that the President just signed into law for that nurses training, financial support, scholarships, grants, loans, & expansions of nursing programs so the law can get into effect & the financial support & training can get started NOW.

If you dont know about the Nurse Reinvestment Act or what it will be able to do for Americans who want to become nurses, you can look it up at http://www.Nursingworld.org

or do a search for it on this site. Lots of info posted.

FTell001 · Oct 5, 2002

I don't worry about the QUALITY of the nurses being imported...but I do worry about our chances of "fixing" the patient nurse ratio...and about improvement of the many problems the USA nurses face. Don't you think that having these nurses come in and work under the conditions we are working under will only undermine any chances to improve the nursing work conditions we face????

-jt · Oct 5, 2002

Yes. Exactly. And thats what nurses are testifying to before Congress. But more of us need to speak about it to them too, be it with phone calls, emails, letters, or postcards because they are now being lobbied by the hospital associations to change the immigration law & allow hundreds of thousands more foreign nurses to be recruited - without a cap or limit on the number, & with less qualifications, less credentials, less testing, & less restrictions - all because the hospitals dont want to do what they must do to make their jobs more attractive to US nurses.

"ANA condemns the practice of recruiting nurses to countries where authorities have failed to address human resource planning and problems that cause nurses to leave the profession and discourage them from returning. The ANA believes that the U.S. health care industry has failed to maintain a work environment conducive to safe, quality nursing practice and one which retains experienced U.S. nurses in patient care. Therefore, the practice of changing immigration law to facilitate the use of foreign-educated nurses is a short-term solution that serves ONLY the interests of the hospital industry, NOT the interests of patients, domestic nurses, or foreign-educated nurses."

http://www.ana.org