Walk the halls of many U.S. hospitals and chances are you’ll find internationally trained nurses on staff. American hospitals recruiting overseas health care professionals is not new; the practice dates as far back as the 1950s. They tapped Filipina nurses in particular to fill staffing shortages. Esther Simpson works at Seattle’s V-A Medical Center. She came to Chicago in 1973 as part of one of the largest wave of Asian migration to the United States. By 1980, the Filipino population in the U.S. jumped to half a million. So many medical professionals came to America that politicians in the Philippines feared a “brain drain.”
Acknowledgements:
Esther Simpson, Professor Catherine Ceniza Choy, NBC Television for clip of Ann Arbor murder trial.
Jon Jang, Jazz Pianistis a jazz pianist who has studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and toured at major concert halls and music festivals in China, South Africa, Europe, Canada and the United States. He is featured on over ten albums and has composed commissions for many theater productions and major concert halls. Jon Jang bio online
Bibliography:
Chan, Sucheng, Asian Americans, An Interpretive History, Twayne Publishers, 1993.
Zia, Helen, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
