"Without Foreign Labor, Long-term Care Could Close its Doors in Seattle."

An article by Danny Westneat, Seattle Times staff columnist, on August 12 describes the dilemma we face in an aging society, where the caregiving workforce is overwhelmingly recent immigrants. Simply put we need more immigrant workers at a time when anti-immigration fever is growing everyday.

Many political analysts say that the decline of John McCain's presidential campaign, (he's been sinking steadily in the polls and has fallen far behind his 2 leading anti-immigrant opponents, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani) has less to do with his support of the war in Iraq than his position that we need to be more flexible on immigration for the sake of the American economy)

Here's a few excerpts from Westneat's column that does a great job of painting a very real illustration that is consistent with the "Who Will Care" perspective of this blog. (To read the full text of Westneat's column see the link below)

The list of jobs Americans won't do apparently includes caring for our aging parents.

We leave that work to people like Virgilio Fule. He's a 62-year-old Filipino man who has been nursing the decrepit and the dying of the Seattle area for 13 years.

Despite his age, he puts in 16 to 20 hours a day. He goes to the homes of folks bedridden by cancer, Alzheimer's or multiple sclerosis. Alzheimer's patients have spit on him and hit him. The pay is low, the job security nil and many of his patients wind up dying.

"When you help ease someone's pain, or brighten them, or give some relief to their families — there's no job satisfaction like that," Fule says. "I'm very proud of the work I do."

But instead of doing everything possible to keep a valuable caregiver in the labor force at a time of growing shortage, Westneat tells us that Virgilio Fule has been imprisoned in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, because he's an illegal immigrant.

Fule says practically everyone on the front lines of elder care is not from around here. "They are Ethiopians, Haitians, Filipino like me," he says. "Americans don't want to do those jobs. You go to any home, you will see it."

"As the director of a Seattle nursing home told The Seattle Times last year: "Without foreign labor, long-term care could close its doors in King County." Now, I realize the debate about immigration has ended, at least for now. We chose to do nothing, except launch a major crackdown.

Westneat asks: "...what's the point of driving a skilled elder-care worker out of our country? Why not fine him and give him some path to stay here legally?"

"There's no plan to do that. Or to bring in any workers to replace him. Yet seven weeks later, there Fule sits. At a $125-per-day cost to us to detain him."

The full text of Danny Westneat's column can be found at the following link:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2003832744&zsection_id=2002111777&slug=danny12&date=20070812
Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.

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