The Role of Migrant Care Workers in Aging Societies
had shifted from teaching Information Technology after the 2003 dot.com bust to what was seen as a more economically advantageous sector. Students were willing to pay large amounts to be trained in an occupation that appeared to be in growing demand in the United States and other destination countries. Reportedly, the lure of immigration possibilities even drew some physicians to retrain for nursing in the hopes of easier admission to destination countries. 63
SUPPLY AND RECRUITMENT OF MIGRANTS IN DIRECT CARE Direct care workers are distinct from professional care workers in many ways. Direct care workers tend to find their way into eldercare in quite different ways from professionals, both in terms of their occupational and immigration pathways. They tend to have less education, training, or certification requirements; and they tend to come to the job by routes other than health care or training specific to eldercare. There are no visas that favor their admission in the immigration system. We interviewed 15 direct care workers, representing the countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Russia, Mongolia, Cameroon, and Bolivia, individually and in group settings, as well as several recruiters and employers in Arizona and the Washington-Baltimore area.
Migrant workers’ routes into care in the United States Unlike most of the nurses interviewed for this project that came to the United States having been recruited overseas for specific jobs and indicated economic reasons as the main impetus for migrating, none of the care workers arrived in the United States to assume employment in the adult care sector. Some came as refugees, mainly from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, and the former Soviet Union. Others came as immigrants to reunify with family members already in the United States. Becky, for example, joined her husband who was a Colonel in Ethiopia; it is unclear whether he came as a refugee or with some other immigration status.
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