Filipino Nurses Support Group
Press Statement

National Reciprocity policy urgently needed to resolve health crisis

For immediate release, October 18, 2005

A Vancouver-based organization of Philippine-trained nurses urged today that government and institutions recognize foreign-trained nurses through reciprocity agreements.

The Filipino Nurses Support Group (FNSG) asserted that reciprocity - a policy that allows foreign-trained nurses to immediately work as nurses in Canada's health care system - is a cost effective strategy to resolve the ever-instensifying nursing shortage, but most importantly, promotes the upward labour mobility, economic security, and equality of this sector of immigrants.

Philippine-trained nurses benefited from reciprocity agreements in Canada during the 1960s and 1970s. Today, however, Philippine-trained nurses share the same reality as many other highly educated and skilled immigrants in Canada.
Recent research studies confirm that thousands of qualified professional immigrants are unable to work in their area of training resulting in occupational segregation and immigrants earning far lower than that of native-born Canadians.

"From our experience as a marginalized community in Canada, systemic racism, in the form of political unwillingness, bureaucratic red tape, and institutional protectionism, divides the nursing profession and segregates us into a class of super cheap labour," states Leah Diana, a Filipino nurse and member of FNSG.
Philippine-trained nurses face immigration policies, particularly the Live-in Caregiver Program, that relegate them into domestic work and 24-hour home support work and nursing care. "It is undeniable that the LCP is a racist and anti-woman program as CIC tabulates that 95.1% of Live-in Caregivers, are Filipino women and many of them are nurses," continues Diana.

Despite the dire nursing shortage - Canada will lose up to 30,000 nurses by 2006 and up to 100,000 nurses by 2011* - Philippine-trained nurses cannot enter Canada as independent immigrants because CIC's point system for assessing qualified independent immigrants grants too few points to the nursing profession.

"I find it scandalous that despite my over 15 years of being a hemodialysis nurse and head nurse in Saudi Arabia, I am demoted in Canada as a servant," states a member of FNSG who is under the LCP. "I know I am not the only one facing this. Canada will welcome 7 of my Filipino nursing colleagues from Saudi Arabia next month, not as nurses, but of course as live-in caregivers!"

Like the Filipino nurses under the LCP, the few Philippine-trained nurses that have entered Canada as independent immigrants also face the same bureaucratic red tape and discriminatory policies of regulatory bodies and even trade unions.

"A national reciprocity policy in Canada is urgently needed to correct not only the country's hemorrhaging health crisis, but also the inequality and racial discrimination faced by Philippine-trained and other foreign-trained nurses," asserts Cecilia Diocson, a Filipino nurse and chairperson of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada, a national body of Filipino women's groups of which FNSG is a member. “We will continue to bring out this issue.”

For more information, contact Leah or Sheila at fnsg@kalayaancentre.net

* statistics from Canadian Institute for Health Information and Canadian Nurses Association respectively