The Trump administration’s mass deportation plans are expected to have crippling effects on the U.S. economy. Threats from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct roundups in the New York City area could lead to the detention of workers with jobs in the construction, healthcare, and food service industries, according to newly released data..
ICE’s pressures on healthcare workers could have a particularly significant ripple effect, extending to the care provided to New Yorkers. In recent years, members of the city’s immigrant communities have taken on many roles in health care and caregiving.
“The majority of healthcare workers are foreign-born (57%), compared to 42% for all other workers,” the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) noted in a recent study and “Healthcare occupations across the earnings spectrum are filled with immigrant workers; 44% of physicians are foreign-born, as are 50% of registered nurses, 65% of nursing assistants, and 73% of home health and personal care aides.”
U.S.-born workers are not being trained for these jobs, and even if they start taking courses to qualify for these roles, few are expected to pursue them, especially given the salaries these positions offer. “Median earnings for this group were $26,100, half the median income for all workers in the City ($52,100),” the CMS study reported.
Skilled immigrants
Vanessa, an anesthesiologist from Venezuela, spoke with the AmNews about how she restarted her medical career in New York City after initially being unsure of how to transfer her credentials. Although she had extensive operating room experience in Venezuela, she is currently working as an anesthesia technician in the U.S.
It was only after she came into contact with the group Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid (VIA) and Upwardly Global, a nonprofit that helps skilled immigrants and refugees restart their careers, that she was able to work in the medical field again. Immigrants are required to already have a work permit to apply for the Upwardly Global program.
As an anesthesia technician, her job is to prepare the anesthesia machine and all supplies needed in the operating room before the anesthesiologist arrives. In the event of an emergency, Vanessa has to be ready to enter the operating room and assist the anesthesiologist in managing the situation.
Vanessa says the work she sees done here isn’t much different from what she did in Venezuela as an anesthesiologist. “No, it’s the same,” she said. “The only thing here that’s different is that they have more advanced monitors for cardiovascular surgeries like heart transplants and liver transplants. But for general cases and very sick patients, it is the same.”
The biggest hurdle she had was that it took her four months to learn the names of everything in English. Even with that challenge, she believes she is on par with other trainees who enter the hospital, “because now I’m training people [whose] first language is English, and they have the same situation as me: learning the names of the supplies.”
Before joining Upwardly Global, Vanessa was unable to find a job in health care. She had been hired to work at a local community center because they knew she had medical knowledge; they wanted her to coordinate occasional community health workshops.
Although Latin American countries have high-quality medical institutions, the U.S. requires doctors educated abroad to undergo a specific evaluation and examination process. Because she completed her residency in Venezuela, Vanessa wasn’t expecting to have to repeat it in this country. Yet if she wanted to work as an anesthesiologist again, she was told she would need to finish another three or four years of residency. She had come to the U.S. with her husband and child, and couldn’t afford to spend so many years on re-licensing.
“And also, anesthesiologists are very competitive residencies,” she said, “so I have to compete with all the people who are residents to get their medical license in the U.S., plus all the immigrants who want to apply for an anesthesiologist residency.”
For now, however, Vanessa’s position as an anesthesia technician is a role that, in New York City, has a median salary of around $56.44 per hour, according to the healthcare jobs website Vivian Health. The average annual salary for an anesthesiologist is $425,375, or roughly $204.51 per hour.