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Filipino Nurses Support Group Letter to the Editor "Brain drain now a national 'hemorrhage'"
September 21, 2005
Philippine Daily Inquirer, Re: Brain drain now a national 'hemorrhage', 21 September 2005
The Philippine Star, Re: Government hit on exodus of medical workers, 21 September 2005
Dear editors:
While the exodus of Filipino doctors and nurses has escalated from a ‘brain drain’ to a ‘brain hemorrhage’, thousands of young and highly-skilled nurses from the Philippines suffer from a de-humanizing state of ‘brain waste’ once recruited to Canada.
As the fourth largest visible minority group in Canada, third largest in British Columbia, and second in Vancouver, Filipinos are among the highest-educated, yet lowest-paid of all immigrants. Our average annual income is $2000 lower than those Canadian-born.
A stark example of the brain waste rampant in our community is the de-skilling of nurses from the Philippines who are legislated into poverty and debt. Unable to afford the mounting costs and held back by discriminatory immigration and accreditation requirements, their only option to enter Canada is through the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP).
The LCP recruits nurses and other trained professionals, mostly (93%) from the Philippines to work as domestic workers, oftentimes for less than minimum wage, since they are required to live in their employers’ homes and are “on call” 24 hours a day to do the cooking, cleaning, and all-around caregiving for wealthy Canadian families.
The modern-day slavery of Filipino nurses trapped in the LCP grows despite the country’s desperate need for nurses. Canada is projected to be short 78,000 nurses by 2011 and 113,000 by 2016. Meanwhile, Filipino nurses are used as sources of cheap labour in the drive to further privatize Canada’s health care services in the name of globalization, resulting in their downward mobility.
More and more Filipino doctors are even resorting to fast-track nursing courses to escape the worsening conditions in their homeland only to face discriminatory barriers from practicing their profession. In Canada, these doctors end up taking low-wage work of serving food and cleaning floors for which they are extremely over qualified.
Since 1995, the Filipino Nurses Support Group (FNSG) has been advocating for the full accreditation and reciprocity of nurses from the Philippines to help alleviate Canada’s nursing shortage and health care crisis. FNSG also urges the Philippine government to provide decent work and wages to nurses and other health care workers, instead of selling its own people to other countries in exchange for their overseas remittances.
Sincerely,
Sheila Farrales
Filipino Nurses Support Group
Vancouver, Canada
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