Thread: Immigration – Having It Both Ways

Immigration – Having It Both Ways

A Desert Independent Flashback


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By Dr. HOWARD MARKLE
The Desert Independent

August 13, 2010

This article was originally published March 22, 2004, but is still relevant today.

BLYTHE, Calif – Immigrant labor, both unskilled and professional, continues to flood into the United States. On one end of the spectrum are those who attempt to sneak across the border into Texas, Arizona, California, and Florida just to highlight a few states. Some come from Canada while others simply gain access by coming ashore in shipping containers and other flotation devices. Some of this tide of humanity is interdicted by the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, and various other officers of Homeland Security. In addition bounty hunters are out in force looking for illegals missed by the Border Patrol.

Professionals such as those found in the medical field can make more money here than in their home countries. This is nothing new. Many of my compatriots at Penn State, back in the 60's and 70's, were here complements of both sending and receiving countries; they were expected to return home following their education here but many remained in the US as a consequence of greater opportunity, more money and greater freedoms. Then and now it was and is known as the "brain drain.â€

Let me tell you something. We've recently had a serious illness in our family that has introduced our family to new current medical care facilities including a major metro hospital, one of the top 50 in the nation, a major corporate acute rehabilitation center, one of the best in the country, and now a skilled nursing center with rehabilitation therapy programs in all three fields of physical, occupational and speech.

The hospital had about30% immigrant doctors, nurses and technicians. The acute rehab facility had about 15% immigrant nurses. The skilled nursing facility so far has 0% immigrants that I've seen so far.

Anyone who wants to tout foreign workers over American workers is just plain missing the facts and not telling the truth about the situation. It's not that the America workers are any more educated on the medical issues. There was no evidence of that. It's not that all 3 facilities have done an outstanding job, because they have. But, there are differences in the care, there are language and accent issues, there are cultural and colloquial issues of enough importance that if not strenuously monitored by families as ours did could have adversely impacted the medical care.

It's very important that legal immigrants learn both our language, lose their accent and develop ours, and learn culture, traditions, ways and colloquialisms. It's also vitally important to our country and economy that American employers make a much stronger effort to hire Americans. It makes no difference to a business if in the course of trying to save money, you destroy the source of expendable income needed to sustain your market for your product or service. Otherwise, all you achieved was cutting off your nose to spite your face and took an entire nation down with the nose.