Response to Marilda´s QuestionHi, Marilda.
You asked if I think that the U.S. needs immigrants for its economy.
Basically, yes, I do think that the U.S. economy can benefit from immigrants. If the immigrants are not professionals and/or cannot communicate well in English, I think it benefits the U.S. economy very much when immigrants take the low-level jobs that other people do not want (a sad but true situation). If the immigrants are professionals and can communicate well in English, I also think they help the U.S. economy greatly because they can help relieve shortages in such needed areas as health care and education.
I would hate to see the U.S. start a "guest worker" program, though. In countries that have such a program, the lives of guest workers are often not much better than they were in the countries that they immigrated from.
posted by Dennis @ 5:43 PM
2 Comments:
Hello, Denis.
Your reply is very interesting.
I didn't know that the USA needed people in health care and education.
I knew that Canada was inviting foreign people to study and work there.
I read that the USA will put about 6,000 police in Mexico border to
avoid the new immigrants there.
Do you think it will be enough?
I know that people will enter through Guatemala. Did you hear about it?
Marilda
Hi, Marilda.
Yes, health-care and educational professionals are needed here: there is a shortage of nurses here and there is also a shortage of well-qualified teachers in many places. There's a problem, however: health-care and educational professionals have to be qualified according to U.S. standards, which is often a problem.
I had one student, for example, who was a highly-qualified medical professional (a cytologist) from a central European country; in her home country, she had worked in a high-level position in a regional medical center. Here, because passing the qualifying examinations is difficult, she will probably be a nurse practitioner or physician's assistant (and will probably know more than the doctors she assists).
I had another student who had been a pediatric nurse for over 30 years in her home country. The qualifying examinations were also a problem for her—and her goal changed from continuing a career which was already well established to beginning a new one as a registered nurse or nurse practitioner.
Yes, there has been a lot of talk about having many more soldiers (mostly from the U.S. National Guard, not the regular army) posted along the border, particularly the border with México. I'm not totally sure what this is supposed to accomplish. If the border has to be "protected," however, it's better to have it protected by National Guards troops than by civilian groups like some of the militia that have made it their responsibility to "guard" the border.
I'm not sure what you mean about entering by way of Guatemala. Do you mean entering Guatemala from México and then entering the U.S. from Guatemala?
Best wishes—
Dennis
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