Stuck in the middle Filipino Nurse
The Philippines has a problem. On top of fighting the spread of the coronavirus, Hospitals are facing another crisis. There are more than 20,000 nurses short. However, the thing is that tens of thousands of nurses graduate every Year in the Philippines. There is a tradition of an oath-taking ceremony where 35,000 graduating nurses and many Filipinos pledge the oath of health and safety. Usually, there are many Filipinos who are in this career path because it is pressurized heavily. So how can the Philippines have so many nurses but are dealing with a nurse shortage at the same time? If you go back to history in 1898 When the Philippines became a U.S. Colony. Filipinos fought back but were ultimately conquered by American troops. Unfortunately, 200,0000 Filipinos died as a result. As part of the Philippines' colonization, the U.S. created a policy called the "Benevolent Assimilation" that claimed to protect Filipino rights and liberties. They use this way to justify the Philippines' colonization by arguing that this was a different kind of colonialism and imperialism. That this Idea was beneficial and useful as it would bring education and infrastructure, and public health. The U.S. started taking over institutions and education and began developing a medical labor force in the Philippines. They have built more than Ten Nursing schools in less than a decade. Filipino nursing students had to learn western medical practices from American Teachers, and they had no other choice but to learn English. Year after Year, new classes of American trained, English speaking Filipino nurses graduated from nursing schools. What this ultimately did was that it inadvertently prepared Filipino Nurses to work in the United States. The Nursing training system went on until the Philippines gained independence in 1946. However, even though the Philippines broke free, America soon found a way to bring Filipino Nurses over.
Starting in 1941, After the U.S. entered World War II, Millions of Americans joined the armed forces. Thousands of nurses enlisted to treat injured soldiers in the field, and American hospitals started emptying. The government-funded programs like the Cadet Nurse Corps to fill the gaps. They provided millions of dollars for a "Lifetime education for free." They encouraged American women, in particular, to "enlist in a profound profession." As a result, nearly 200,000 American women became a nurse for the army and civilian hospitals. All worked with the same purpose, to ease the pain of war and help save lives, but that all changed in 1945 when the war came to an end. Once the fighting was over. There was less support for nurses' government funding dried up, and many women quit nursing. Hospitals started seeing a rise in Vacancy, which meant America needed to find nurses to fill the void again. Instead of improving pay and working conditions to encourage American Nurses to return, the U.S. looked Beyond its border to the jobs that Americans would not necessarily take. They turn to a new temporary visitors program as a solution. U.S. Hospitals started to use the exchange reserve program to recruit Filipino nurses because they had Americanized training already, and it worked. Filipino nurses have dominated the program for about a decade.
More than 10,000 Filipino nurses came to the U.S. to work, but the real reason so many left their homes was to do what was happening in the Philippines. After centuries of oppressive regime Colonial Control and their world war two battles. The Philippines ' economy finally started to stabilize the city where flourishing and tourism were blooming. However, wages, particularly in rural areas, were still low for nearly everyone, despite having regular training that included nurses who were often paid less than janitors or messengers, which pushed many Filipinos to go abroad in search of better opportunities. However, when they came over to the U.S. Many sponsoring Hospitals just used them as expensive labor. They assigned them extensive nurse work and only paid the minimum wage stipend after their temporary placements ended. Many Filipino nurses went back to the Philippines.
In contrast, many others managed to stay longer and build a life in the U.S., building healthy Filipino Communities. However, the exchange visitor program wasn't the end of the Americas hold on Filipino nurses. It was just the beginning. The 1960s brought significant changes in America. There are certain historical events, new great society programs such as the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid. There were civil rights, social movements. American women have more opportunities to enter other kinds of occupations, all of this coverage to an increased demand for nurses services and more nursing shortages in the United States. In just three years, Nurse vacancies doubled. Nearly one in every four nursing jobs was vacant. To Fill the new shortage. The U.S. turned to the Philippines once again, but this time it was different. Immigration policies in America changed drastically in 1965 with the immigration and nationality act. For the first time, people from all over the world could apply for immigrant visas. On top of sponsoring hospitals, labor recruiters and travel agencies started targeting Filipinos with ads that promised better futures. One particular Ad featured a basket that was decorated with the Philippine Flag. It's addressing the Filippino nurse saying, "Dear Nurse, if your not happy wherever you are right now, contact us, We can't promise you happiness, but we can help you chase it all over the place, so Filipino nurses begin filling the shortages all around the U.S., But soon many experiences faced discrimination.
The American nurses association added licensing requirements to limit the entry to the U.S. The nurses who did pass those requirements came to the U.S. and ended up in underpaid lower positions still; it's this phase of the migration that lasted through today and transform the U.S. healthcare industry the temporary pathway established 20 years earlier became a permanent migration route. The hospitals now have a way to John nurses whenever they wanted but focusing on what puts so many nurses to America overlooks the forces that continued to push them out, which brings us back to the Philippines. Frigid and Marcus, who ruled the Philippines with an iron fist from 1965 to 1986 in 1972 under martial law, began to rule as a dictator. He was behind more than 3000 extrajudicial killings and tens of thousands of tortures and incarceration. As a result of the unrest, the economy that was starting to pick up fell into a recession.
Moreover, unemployment skyrocketed, but instead of addressing the lack of jobs, the Philippine government actively promote and publicize a labor export and the export of Filipino workers to countries throughout the world, and that's because Filipino workers overseas we're starting to send hundreds of millions of dollars back home to their families. The Filipino government wanted to keep that money coming over time.
The government push leads to global migration, making the Philippines the largest exporter of nurses globally. Nearly 20,000 nurses leave the Philippines every Year. They go to Saudi Arabia or Australia, the UK, Germany. However, many of them have ended up in the U.S. nearly 1/3 of all foreign-born nurses are Filipino FaceTime Face with the U.S. recruiting nurses on the one hand and the Philippine pushing them to work on broad. The other governments had benefited from Filipino labor. Over the deck, 150,000 Filipino nurses have come to work in U.S. hospitals after years of expectation and discrimination. Filipino and Filipino American nurses have organized in the U.S. they push back an exploited practices and have fun for better working conditions; however, surveys show a large number of Filipino nurses are still concentrated in the side, and critical care, some of the most dangerous and strenuous work it's the kind of work that puts the disproportionately on the front lines of the fight against the coronavirus the pandemic has taken an outsized toll under Filipino healthcare workers up to 318 health care workers lost to the coronavirus as of may, athletes 30 are Filipino, and still, thousandths remain on the front lines in April 2020, as the coronavirus spread in the Philippines, the shortage of nurses across hospital became a problem, the government temporarily banned healthcare workers from leaving to work abroad.
It might seem like an appropriate idea for Filipino nurses to remain in the Philippines; it's also important to remember that Filipino nurse oversees my question is a long-standing remember phenomenon that has been actively promoted by the Philippine government even though the band was eventually lifted the points to the instability ability that Filipino nurses have to live with on both sides of the migration route pushed and pulled between countries Filipino nurses continue to get caught in the middle even as they strive to work on the front lines providing critical care like they always have.