Despite the influx of nurses in the United States in search of greener pastures, the land of milk and honey is projected to incur a shortage in nurses of one million by 2020, a Filipina nursing association official disclosed. [Rosario] May Mayor, president of the Philippine Nursing Association of America, cited that the recent National Supply and Demand Projection for Foreign Trained and Educated Registered Nurses from 2000 to 2020 predicted the shortage, because of the lack of recruitment regulation that breeds violation of foreign nurses’ human rights.
“There is lack of recourse on the part of the foreign nurses, including Filipinos. They tend to endure excessive workloads because of the lack of information on [the] market,” said Mayor during a roundtable of the Second Global Forum on Migration and Development.
Mayor noted that there are companies that do not charge nurses or do not require contracts, while there are recruiters who alter their potential employees’ contracts upon arrival in the United States, without the consent from the migrant worker.
“There are also employers who keep the green cards of the overseas workers and recruiter, [which] also result in a delay in social security numbers and temporary permits, resulting in lesser paying jobs,” she added.
She cited the plight of the Sentosa Filipino nurses who are still fighting their case in a U.S. court. The group was accused of abandoning their contracts after they resigned because of allegedly substandard salaries. The high price of buyouts and threats of deportation for undocumented workers, according to Mayor, also lessen the ability of the migrant workers to resign, which is their best defense against abuse. The buyout fee ranges from $10,000 to $50,000.
“There is a need to define minimum standards to prevent these abuses. These cause the nurses to be burned out and dissatisfied with what they are doing because of the complex roles that they perform,” she stressed. As such, Mayor called for trade agreements between countries that have ethical clauses that are specific to recruitment and process of migration.
