TOPSHOT – Tesla CEO Elon Musk (r.) jumps on stage as he joins Donald Trump during a campaign rally in … [+]
Despite his promise to shut U.S. borders to just about all immigrants and deport hundreds of thousands of others, President-elect Donald Trump says he’ll proceed to grant special H-1B work visas for technicians. That decision got here in response to a few of his Silicon Valley supporters who insist that foreign employees are crucial because there aren’t enough U.S.-born engineers and others to do that necessary work.
By this logic, Trump must also protect direct care employees who take care of individuals with disabilities and frail older adults from his mass deportation plans and even grant them recent special immigration status. Why? Because, well, there aren’t enough American-born people willing to do that necessary work.
Making America Strong
Elon Musk, who led the push to steer Trump to proceed the H-1B visa program, called immigrants “Critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong.”
But in point of fact, the case for direct care could also be even stronger than for technology. That’s why Some tech corporations have taken advantage of the H-1B visa program To substitute native-born employees with temporary, lower-cost foreign-born employees.
This is just not the case with nursing staff, where a severe shortage of U.S.-born aides and nurses is real and not only a chance to cut back labor costs.
Additionally, caring for frail older adults and younger individuals with disabilities also makes America strong.
It helps maintain the standard of lifetime of those in need of care, lots of whom pay taxes and have been enormously productive over the many years of their working lives. But beyond that, access to paid aides, nurses, and other direct care employees can enable their relations to proceed working productive paid jobs (perhaps some are even computer engineers).
And the private care they supply may also help prevent costly, preventable acute medical episodes, emergency room visits and hospitalizations – all of which may also help reduce U.S. health care spending. This could possibly be of interest to Musk, who advises Trump on reducing government spending.
A serious defect
The need for more nursing staff is evident.
For example, the United States will need nearly 200,000 additional nurses by 2030. in line with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another The report concludes The U.S. can be short nearly 79,000 RNs this yr alone.
The research and advocacy organization PHI estimates In the last decade 2022 to 2032, almost 5.5 million vacancies in home care will must be filled. This estimate includes replacing current employees leaving their jobs and meeting recent demand from an aging population.
The labor shortage should come as no surprise. Home health aides are one of the dangerous jobs of all professions, largely attributable to back injuries from transporting patients. They earn a mean hourly wage of just over $16, and their average annual income is simply about $22,000. Almost one in six people live in poverty and around 60% receive public support.
Interestingly, the overall workforce in home care is anticipated to grow by greater than 700,000 jobs over this era, greater than another occupation and twice as fast as software developers.
As with tech employees, immigrants are critical to bridging the deep gap between the demand for direct care employees and the availability of individuals willing to tackle these difficult tasks.
An immigrant workforce
Currently around 18% of nursing home assistants were born abroad, in line with the Baker Institute at Rice University. One-third of registered home care employees are immigrants. And of the various unlicensed home care aides working within the gray market, many are immigrants, including many undocumented.
Without these foreign born employees, Long-term care and the healthcare system would collapse. It is not any exaggeration to say that folks would die.
Trump’s plan for mass deportations may have a big impact on the health of hundreds of thousands of Americans, at the same time as it deviates from his campaign promise to deport as much as 20 million people. Closing the border to recent immigrants will make the issue worse.
The president-elect appears to be listening to those high-tech executives who gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign and inaugural gifts and are listening to immigration.
Few families have such access. But hundreds of thousands of them are already affected by a shortage of direct care staff. At least the brand new government must be certain that the situation doesn’t grow to be even worse.
It may even take some modest steps to reverse the crisis. For example, Trump could revive an old visa program for nurses and create one for support employees. Because identical to technicians, they supply necessary services that native Americans are unwilling to offer.
