July 01, 2004
Memo From Mexico, By
Allan Wall
Spraying Blood And Importing Nurses
A recent article in
my local newspaper was entitled “México
exporta… enfermeras.” (Mexico
exports….nurses) (El Siglo de Torreón, June
13th, 2004[Not online, see
here]). It began:
“Each year, 10 % of
nurses , of the recently –graduated and of those who
work in IMSS, ISSSTE and the Secretaría de Salud
[Mexican government
health-care providers], migrate to the U.S., Spain
and the U.K. for salaries that surpass 44,000 dollars
annually.”
The
article says that in the first five months of 2004, 1000
Mexican nurses went to the U.S., 200 to Spain and 50 to
the U.K.
Once again, the
wage differential is the great attraction. In
Mexico, nurses earn, on average, 26.4 pesos an hour, or
about $2.32. In the U.S. they make 30 dollars an hour.
That’s quite a difference.
You
know the story from the employers, we hear it again and
again – “There’s a shortage! Americans won’t do
the work! We
have to hire foreigners!”
But
for the other side to the story, drop into the website
www.hireamericancitizens.org which has an entire
section dealing with the alleged “Nursing Shortage.”
It
asks the question:
“Nurses: Have you been replaced with your cheaper
foreign replacement yet?” And it puts things in
perspective:
“There are over 600,000
American registered nurses not working as nurses, and
countless other nurses who have become independent
nurses. These are nurses... They are available... They
are American... but hospitals won't hire them. Why? It’s
about the money. Hospitals
refuse to pay nurses enough to keep American nurses
interested in the job, and refuse to hire independent
nurses. Instead of raising the pay to fit the job,
hospitals have decided to call what is really lack of
interest in the job for the pay being offered, a
‘shortage’….Hospitals would much rather have the cheaper
indentured servant they can have by hiring foreign
nurses who fear deportation if they don't do exactly as
asked…..”
As the article
explains, it’s now easier than ever to import foreign
nurses:
“All this shortage
shouting has created some new loopholes to be created
that allow massive numbers of foreign nurses to flood
the US market.”
Lillian Gonzalez, an
American R.N., contributes an article, “Imported
Problem?” describing her own experiences. She
concludes the article with this prescription:
“As I travel across the
country, I think about my experiences, and I have
concluded that the better solution to solving our
nursing shortage is to recruit and retain
our own nurses.”
(Nurse Gonzalez’ own
website is
www.AnAmericanRN.com).
Now let’s go back to
Mexico. The exodus of nurses is actually making it
difficult for Mexico to honor its commitment to the
World Health Organization. In a treaty with the WHO,
Mexico promised to have 437,000 nurses by the year 2010.
At present, it only has 179,634. And each year, only
another 2, 656 new nurses graduate. Of that paltry
number, only half actually find work as nurses, the rest
work in unrelated occupations.
Looks like Mexico
won’t make the deadline.
It’s the same familiar story found elsewhere. Mexicans
leave Mexico for higher wages in the U.S., where
employers claim they can’t find Americans to hire
because of “labor shortages." Meanwhile,
Mexico is hurt by emigration.
And
of course, the Mexican laborers themselves are said to
be exploited in the U.S. Eva León, chief nurse at the
Hospital Regional Ignacio Zaragoza of the ISSSTE, admits
that foreign hospitals offer Mexican nurses higher
salaries. But she complains that they make them care for
HIV patients, and other high-risk patients.
Does importation of foreign nurses really solve the
problem in the U.S.? Does it solve the problems in
Mexico and other countries?
Or
are powerful interest groups simply playing pass the
problem?
I’ve always been curious about how stringent a process
is used to
select foreign nurses.
If
U.S. hospitals are getting the best-qualified foreign
nurses, then we are taking these fine workers away from
Third World countries, where they are needed.
If
the answer is no, we’re endangering our own patients.
It’s likely that both scenarios are true, in different
cases.
And
speaking of those different cases, check out this news
item about a nurse strike in Mexico in May:
“A protest by laid-off
nurses turned bloody… when the health care workers
extracted their own blood with hypodermic needles and
sprayed it at the governor of Puebla state, Melquiades
Morales Flores. A half-dozen of the 28 laid-off nurses
sprayed blood on Morales’ van and his clothes. He
promised to negotiate their reinstatement at the
government-run Puebla Children’s Hospital. A union
official later said the nurses had been offered their
jobs back.”
(The Week in Mexico:
Bloody Protest, San Diego Union-Tribune, May
9th, 2004)
Just think about it. These were nurses laid off by the
state. They protested, threw their own blood at the
governor, who backed down and gave them their jobs back!
The
way things are going, someday one of those
blood-spraying nurses might be
taking care of you!
American citizen Allan Wall lives and works legally in
Mexico, where he holds an FM-2 residency and work
permit, but serves six weeks a year with the Texas Army
National Guard, in a unit composed almost entirely of
Americans of Mexican ancestry. His VDARE.COM articles
are archived
here; his
FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived
here; his
website is
here. Readers
can contact Allan Wall at
allan39@prodigy.net.mx.
