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There was a very interesting article in today's [03/25/18] The Washington Post "Immigrant Caregivers Face Uncertainty". "Families, nursing home officials are concerned that the current President's policies could further drain the health-care worker pool".

As of July 2019 people who came to the U.S. after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti will be forced to go back home. They have been here on temporary permission status, and many are working in the health care pool. And because of the White House's immigration proposals and public remarks many caregivers from all over the world have gone back home or went to Canada. Leaving jobs in Independent Living, Assisted Living, skilled Nursing Homes, private caregiving Agencies, or employed privately with a family. One elder in the story has had this one caregiver since 2011.

My Dad had wonderful caregivers from all over the world. He found it fascinating to learn their cultures. Everyone came to his house on-time and very rarely did anyone call out sick.

With the baby boomers now dealing with age related declines, yikes, what will happen to me? Will it be harder to find Assisted Living or Nursing Home bed openings? Or caregivers to come to the house?

Food for thought.

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Yes it will be harder to find care. But that's simply because the proportion of people needing care compared to the number of people able to work in the sector will increase.

Whether policy statements have that much impact on individual decisions about where to live and work... hmmmm. Journalists love the headlines. Personally I'm quite a lot more sceptical.

Can you see your typical NH worker saying, hm, I don't like the way this is going, I think I'll leave my perfectly good job, decent house, nearby schools and pleasant neighbours and go and see if things are shaping up more comfortably in Toronto?

We have similar "the sky is falling" shrieking going on over Brexit, added to the hardy perennial complaints about working conditions in the NHS and social care sector. "Everyone" is going to go back to Bulgaria (I assume that doesn't include my hairdresser, who seems very happily settled) or move to New Zealand. We're painted heart-rending pictures of tearful doctors and nurses packing up their spotted hankies and setting off back to Germany, with "heartless ingrates!" in thought bubbles over their heads.

Yeah yeah yeah. They've all been saying this since 1983 to my certain knowledge.

And of course the really consoling thing about the US system is that no matter how radical a president may be, for good or otherwise, you know for certain when you will definitely see the back of him.

It takes a lot longer than seven years, at the maximum estimate, to effect fundamental change in any national infrastructure.

Which is why we should have started taking elder care seriously as a vocation - recruiting to it, training people properly, instituting less contemptuous pay scales - at least forty years ago. Oops.
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FF, interesting comments on an unsettling subject. I'm still digesting it all and will hold off answering until I can sort out the issues, raised by both you and CM.
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There are many Haitians here in Mexico. They are working in the airport, selling candies in the street, gas stations, factories, etc.

There are always a lot of them at the Immigration Office in Tijuana also, so I'm assuming they have started the Immigration process. They have developed communities here. This is their new home.
I'm waiting for some Hatian restaurants to open.

At least Mexico's president Peña-Nieto opened their doors to them and isn't sending them home after they've been settled.

If they've been in the US for 8 years and are contributing to society, why do they need to go back?
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They don't need to, and they probably won't. Or they might want to, but it would be only sensible to wait until immigration officers propose to pay their air fare.

There's an awful lot of sound and fury goes on. I do wonder about detention and deportation centres, and whether it isn't the duty of a responsible citizen in a democracy to make enquiries about who's in them and why and what goes on (like I'd even know where to start); but we need to remember - and all the more so in the US, where immigration is a fundamental feature - that people have always migrated back and forth, for all sorts of reasons, with more or less interference from governments, and will continue to do so. From time to time, governments of all hues like to claim that they will do things which are in reality far beyond their power to achieve.

Just don't wait until your neighbours start mysteriously disappearing before you ask what's going on. That July 2019 deadline for everyone from Port au Prince to bog off home, for example: I'd believe it when I see it, but if you happen to know anyone it's going to cause difficulties for the time to ask about it is now.

Presumably they do also need health care workers in Haiti, though, no? Richer societies pinching cheap skills from developing or troubled countries is the other side of the coin, of course.
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