PHA-Exchange> NY Times: "US Plan to Lure Nurses May Hurt Poor Nations"

[Claudio]

From: <spiritof1848 at yahoogroups.com>

> U.S. Plan to Lure Nurses May Hurt Poor Nations
> By CELIA W. DUGGER
> NYT, Published: May 24, 2006
> 
> As the United States runs short of nurses, senators are looking abroad.
> A little-noticed provision in their immigration bill would throw open
> the gate to nurses and, some fear, drain them from the world's
> developing countries.
> 
> Health experts fear that nurses, like this one in Manila, would be
> unable to resist the higher wages offered by hospitals in the United
> States. 
> 
> Nursing students at Manila Doctor's College. An exodus of medical
> workers has left the local health care system on the verge of collapse. 
> 
> The legislation is expected to pass this week, and the Senate provision,
> which removes the limit on the number of nurses who can immigrate, has
> been largely overlooked in the emotional debate over illegal
> immigration. 
> 
> Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who sponsored the proposal,
> said it was needed to help the United States cope with a growing nursing
> shortage. 
> 
> He said he doubted the measure would greatly increase the small number
> of African nurses coming to the United States, but acknowledged that it
> could have an impact on the Philippines and India, which are already
> sending thousands of nurses to the United States a year. 
> 
> The exodus of nurses from poor to rich countries has strained health
> systems in the developing world, which are already facing severe
> shortages of their own. Many African countries have begun to demand
> compensation for the training and loss of nurses and doctors who move
> away. 
> 
> The Senate provision, which would remain in force until 2014, contains
> no such compensation, and has not stirred serious opposition in
> Congress. Because it is not part of the House immigration bill, a
> committee from both houses would have to decide whether to include the
> provision on nurses if the full Congress approves the legislation.
> 
> Public health experts in poor countries, told about the proposal in
> recent days, reacted with dismay and outrage, coupled with doubts that
> their nurses would resist the magnetic pull of the United States, which
> sits at the pinnacle of the global labor market for nurses. 
> 
> Removing the immigration cap, they said, would particularly hit the
> Philippines, which sends more nurses to the United States than any other
> country, at least several thousand a year. Health care has deteriorated
> there in recent years as tens of thousands of nurses have moved abroad.
> Thousands of ill-paid doctors have even abandoned their profession to
> become migrant-ready nurses themselves, Filipino researchers say. 
> 
> "The Filipino people will suffer because the U.S. will get all our
> trained nurses," said George Cordero, president of the Philippine Nurse
> Association. "But what can we do?" 
> 
> The nurse proposal has strong backing from the American Hospital
> Association, which reported in April that American hospitals had 118,000
> vacancies for registered nurses. The federal government predicted in
> 2002 that the accelerating shortfall of nurses in the United States
> would swell to more than 800,000 by 2020.
> 
> "There is no reason to cap the number of nurses coming in when there's a
> nationwide shortage, because you need people immediately," said Bruce
> Morrison, a lobbyist for the hospital association and a former
> Democratic congressman.
> 
> The American Nurses Association, a professional trade association that
> represents 155,000 registered nurses, opposes the measure. The group
> said it was concerned the provision would lead to a flood of nurse
> immigrants and would damage both the domestic work force and the home
> countries of the immigrants.
> 
> "We're disappointed that Congress, instead of providing appropriations
> for domestic nursing programs, is outsourcing the education of nurses,"
> said Erin McKeon, the group's associate director of government affairs.
> 
> Holly Burkhalter, with Physicians for Human Rights, an advocacy group,
> said the nurse proposal could undermine the United States'
> multibillion-dollar effort to combat AIDS and malaria by potentially
> worsening the shortage of health workers in poor countries. "We're
> pouring water in a bucket with a hole in it, and we drilled the hole,"
> she said.
> 
> There are now many more Americans seeking to be nurses than places to
> educate them. In 2005, American nursing schools rejected almost 150,000
> applications from qualified people, according to the National League for
> Nursing, a nonprofit group that counts more than 1,100 nursing schools
> among its members. 
> 
> One of the most important factors limiting the number of students was a
> lack of faculty to teach them, nursing organizations say. Professors of
> nursing earn less than practicing nurses, damping demand for teaching
> positions.
> 
> Under the current immigration system, experts estimate that 12,000 to
> 14,000 nurses have immigrated to the United States annually on
> employment visas that entitle them to bring their immediate family
> members and obtain green cards. They must pass English and U.S. nursing
> exams to qualify for visas.
> 
> In recent years, there had been enough visas for foreign nurses from
> most countries, but a bottleneck developed in 2005, after immigration
> authorities made a big push to clear a backlog of employment visa
> applications. That year, Congress set aside 50,000 additional visas for
> nurses and their families. But those visas will likely have all been
> used up by early next year, State Department officials said.
> 
> It is difficult to forecast exactly how removing the limit on nurse
> immigration would affect the number of nurses who moved to the United
> States. 
> A nurse in the Philippines would earn a starting salary of less than
> $2,000 a year compared with at least $36,000 a year in the United
> States, said Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan, a medical professor at the University
> of the Philippines who led the country's National Institutes of Health.