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DAN HABIB/THE CONCORD MONITOR/CORBIS of it on the countries where these nurses Paul Vasquez, a nurse come from," she said. "Labor supply is a originally from the problem in other nations as well." Philippines, dispenses "Immigration is not the only way we can medicine to residents get more nurses," said Lovell. "Raising wages at the Harris Hill is easier and more effective." The aim, she retirement home said, should be to work toward raising nurse in Concord, NH. wages in other countries. The key to raising wage levels and improving on the job conditions in the U.S., said Lovell, is collective bargaining. A stumbling block is that "labor laws are so weak on protecting workers and unionization." Yes, more nurses will be needed in the coming years, said Burger, but the response to the challenge should be to improve the well-being of nurses employed in hospitals and stepped-up efforts to provide more access to nurse education. "When CNA/NNOC developed its position on nurse migration, a central element was our conclusion that at present the U.S. is not really interested in providing the kind of healthcare workforce that is needed," she said. "The same can be said for other industries as well. Our thinking is that we should be educating sufficient nurses for the future. But we are not doing so. There are three to four times more applicants for positions in nursing schools than there are slots available. What we are essentially doing is splitting the cost of training healthcare personnel with other, poorer countries." Some limited steps have been taken to deal with the education problem. In recent years, legislatures have allocated more funding to opening up more nursing school slots. In California, CNA/NNOC has successfully lobbied for millions of dollars to go toward nursing education. But the U.S. still has a long way to go in creating enough spaces for nursing students, and vocational programs for aspiring nurses. Also, the problem of finding facilities and faculty to train sufficient numbers of nurses inside the country persists. "We have increased interest in the profession at exactly the time when we need to ratchet up our preparation of staff nurses, but we have too few faculty, and the ones that we have are gray and contemplating retirement in droves over the next few years," Sally Lundeen, dean of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Nursing told USA Today Oct. 4. Healthcare industry lobbyist Bruce Morrison anticipates that the number of nurses moving to the U.S. would grow by 5 to 10 percent a APRIL 2007 year if the immigration curbs were lifted. Recruiting companies would target the Philippines, China, and India—countries with greater numbers of well-trained nurses. "But it's certainly true that the longer the United States puts off investing in training nurses, the more pressure there will be to find nurses abroad," he said in the May 2006 New York Times article. The Philippines would particularly suffer under Brownback's proposal. That Asian country sends several thousand nurses every year to the United States, more than any other. As a result, the Philippine healthcare system has disintegrated as thousands of its nurses leave to work overseas. Even thousands of poorly-paid doctors have forsaken their professions to work as nurses. Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, RN and CNA/NNOC vice president, who has worked with Philippine-trained doctors who became RNs in order to emigrate to the U.S. said, they, like the nurses who have left, did so "for one very simple reason: to get away from a situation of relatively low wages and poor working conditions." "A lot of young Filipinos are going into nursing as preparation for leaving the country in search of a better life. As a result of the emigration a lot of hospitals—especially in rural areas—have been forced to close because of a shortage of both doctors and nurses," said Triunfo-Cortez. "In more urban areas the hospitals are able to avoid being closed because people there are more affluent and able to afford preventive care." She says, "The problem is that the government cannot offer the compensation levels that would attract healthcare providers to stay in the country because most of the money there is being spent on business rather than things like healthcare." Entry-level salaries for Filipino nurses start at less than $2,000 a year compared to at least $36,000 a year in the United States, said Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan, a University of the Philippines professor who headed the country's National Institutes of Health. Tan estimates through survey results that 80 percent of the country's government doctors have jumped to nursing or have signed up for nursing programs in hope of getting papers to work in the U.S. "I plead for justice," Tan said in the May 2006 New York Times article. "There has to be give and take, not just take, take, take by the United States." Triunfo-Cortez tells of a recent flight home from the East Coast during which she encountered an airline attendant who had graduated from nursing school and subsequently decided her present job was more attractive. The woman related a number of reasons for her career decision, including better wages and working conditions, the opportunity to travel, and avoidance of the stresses of working with critically ill people. "One of the things she said was that a lot of the good things about her job was a result of having the protection of belonging to a union," said Triunfo-Cortez. "In order to deal with the problems confronting nursing," she continued, "Congress should be concentrating on strengthening the country's healthcare infrastructure and improving wages and working conditions for nurses. And they should step in and undo the recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board making it harder for nurses and others to unionize. If they could have union protection I think many of the nurses not working in hospitals could be convinced to do so." I Carl Bloice is a freelance writer based in San Francisco and Conn Hallinan is a foreign policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and a columnist for the Berkeley Daily Planet. W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G REGISTERED NURSE 17