The Role of Migrant Care Workers in Aging Societies
are placed on an expedited pay scale once they complete their two year contractual agreement with the recruitment agency to level them with natives. The nurses are only brought in with immigrant visas (green cards); no H1-B visas are used. There is always a problem when a visa cap is reached which can also lead to unplanned retrogression, e.g., the time for processing admission is suddenly turned back. It took SouthWest Health 15 months to get their first international nurse in 1999. It takes 1.5 years just to complete the immigration process. Most nurses sign two-year contracts with SouthWest Health. After those two years they can look for different positions. However, more than 90 percent choose to stay with SouthWest Health. Providence Hospital started recruiting aggressively in the late 1990s and early 2000s, mainly from the Philippines, when their vacancy rates in nursing hit the 13 percent mark. Their current Director of International Nursing Recruitment assumed her position in 2002. She is a Filipina herself and spent 12 years as director of nursing at a local hospital in Baltimore. She has both an interest and experience in geriatrics. She had been director of nursing at a hospital that also ran a nursing home with approximately 330 beds. She feels that the national debate on nurse shortages focuses too much on acute care at the cost of not planning for geriatric nursing. Providence Hospital recruits directly from abroad, because the cost of going through a staffing agency is too high and the return – in terms of poor quality control and lack of understanding of the Filipino culture – is not worth the expense. Providence is in direct competition with other large hospitals in the area. They do work with one on-the-ground agency certified by the Filipino Department of Labor. The director of recruitment prefers this arrangement as it allows her to monitor the local recruiter more closely and helps to avoid unscrupulous recruiters. Recruiters do not only exploit job applicants, they also take advantage of unsuspecting employers, she said. She conducts “mass interviews” in different sites in the Philippines. Usually, she advertises about three months ahead so the prospective applicants can
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