Separation Anxieties : Immigration Quotas Keep Filipina Nurses From Their Families

Marilou Majarucon is a victim of her hopes for a better life.

Like thousands of other young women, she left her family and her poverty-stricken home in the Philippines to take a job as a nurse in the United States.

On the one hand, the petite, 29-year-old Sepulveda woman is deeply grateful for her chance to earn a good living. “This is a very blessed place,” she said of the United States.

But on the other, America can be a lonely country when you haven’t seen your husband in nearly five years and when your 4-year-old daughter--who has battled a series of life-threatening medical problems--knows her father only as a face in a photo album. Majarucon spends $500 each month on long-distance phone calls in an effort to keep her divided family from breaking apart.

One of an estimated 16,000 foreign nurses brought to the United States to ease a critical nursing shortage, Majarucon is a mercenary in the war against disease. Her problems have become increasingly common as American hospitals turn to countries from England to Australia to fill vacancies on nursing staffs.

But while life in America is an adjustment for all foreign workers, it can be a unique strain for Filipina nurses.

There are bureaucratic hurdles that make it difficult for them to bring their loved ones here even for a visit, forcing these imported angels of mercy to endure years of isolation. For many, their burden is increased because they are the only support for husbands and children thousands of miles away. Some critics believe that all this is an especially cold welcome for people that American hospitals are luring here with promises of good salaries and benefits.

Private immigration experts and the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimate that between 60% and 75% of the foreign nurses working on temporary visas in the United States are from the Philippines and that many locate in Southern California for the weather.

When the Philippine nurses get together in the hospital cafeteria, the conversation centers on the latest news from home. “My husband cries on the phone a lot,” said one Filipina nurse who asked not to be identified.

Carl Shusterman, an immigration lawyer who formerly prosecuted cases for the INS, argues that a discriminatory policy keeps Filipinas separated from their families. He says European nurses rarely have to endure separations of more than a few months, while the Filipinas may be isolated for up to five years.

“We are the ones encouraging these nurses to come and meet our labor needs,” said Shusterman, who represents Majarucon and dozens of other foreign nurses in their legal battles with the federal government. “We ought to have enough humanity to help them keep their families together.”

But Shusterman said one nurse told him that she was bluntly told by a government official: “Listen, you better decide if you want a job or if you want to stay with your husband.”

The State Department argues that hardships of the Filipinas reflect cold economic reality, not racial preference for Europeans. Since foreign nurses are here to work, spouses who want to come on a visitor’s visa must certify that they do not intend to work in the United States.

Most husbands cannot come on a working visa because, unlike their wives’, their skills are not in demand in the United States. The husbands must also prove that they have sufficiently strong financial and family ties back home so they will not be tempted to stay here.

Meeting this test is more difficult for Filipinos simply because of the increased level of poverty back home. Majarucon’s husband was turned down for visas so many times that he eventually told his wife that he would not try anymore.

Many foreign nurses do apply to become permanent residents of the United States. Once the nurse receives her green card, her spouse is also eligible to become a resident. But there are long delays here as well.

Where the waiting period for the spouse of a European nurse applying for a green card is only a few months, according to Shusterman, it is several years in the Philippines. There is an annual limit on the number of immigrants who can be admitted each year from any one country, and countries such as the Philippines, where there are a large number of people who want to come to the United States, reach that limit much faster than others.

“There is no discrimination involved. It’s sheer economics,” said one State Department source familiar with the problem.

Some say the nurses should bear responsibility for the choices they freely made to work here. “Because you’re granted a temporary visa, that does not mean you have a right to have your spouse emigrate with you,” said Duke Austin, an INS spokesman. Even Shusterman admits that some nurses kid themselves into believing that once they are here, things will somehow work out for their spouses.

But for poor people who see America’s nursing shortage as a rare chance at a decent life, there isn’t much of a choice.

“You have to think of the future,” said one nurse who tries without much success to raise her husband’s falling morale. The State Department official admitted that it can be a struggle for these nurses. “Unquestionably, it puts people in a bind.”

One of a family of 14, Majarucon came to the United States in 1986. “My ambition was to go to the United States to earn dollars and provide support for my family,” she said in precise English.

Shortly after Majarucon’s arrival, her daughter, Marjorie, was born with a rare condition in which many of her organs are on the wrong side. Her liver began to fail and efforts began to bring her father, Gil Majarucon, a laborer at America’s Subic Bay Naval Base, to the United States on an emergency visit. The mother said Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) tried to intervene to obtain a visa for him, but failed.

Majarucon eventually brought her daughter to UCLA Medical Center, where a liver transplant was recommended. The baby’s condition grew steadily worse as she waited at home for a donor. The mother worked a full shift in the bone marrow transplant unit at Childrens Hospital, then came home and cared for her daughter.

“Our room was a clinic,” Majarucon said.

Finally, in November, 1988, the child was taken for a final time to UCLA. “She was about to die. They told me there was no way she could go home.”

Miraculously, a donor liver became available the next day and the transplant was performed, paid for mostly by California Children’s Services, Majarucon says. The transplant alone cost $250,000.

Though undersized for her age at 3 feet and 30 pounds, the girl has recovered her health enough that she is starting to ask about her father. Majarucon tells her that her father is working. “You feel sad, discouraged,” she said.

Majarucon has applied to be a permanent resident. Because of the backlog in cases, it could be 1994 before the family is reunited, by which time the little girl will be 7, Shusterman said.

Congress passed the Immigration Nursing Relief Act of 1989 to speed up the process for Philippine nurses wishing to become residents. A provision was included to grant spouses green cards at the same time the nurses receive theirs. But that provision was dropped in conference committee, meaning that spouses may have to wait additional years to get their cards.

For a West Covina nurse, the choice was over which spouse would have to go abroad in search of work.

With the Philippine economy in a shambles, her geologist husband could find employment only in the oil fields of the Middle East. But in the end, they decided that she would leave home for the United States. The woman, who asked that her name not be used, left her three children five years ago.

The children are now 8, 13 and 14. The nurse calls home three or four times a month, but tries to keep the bills below $300 to save money. She sends $1,000 each month back to the Philippines; the money supports her family.

This nurse’s social life consists mainly of an occasional trip to the mall with friends. She avoids parties, she said, because of the temptations.

“I am always praying that our family will remain intact,” she said. “My children keep asking me to come home.”

Some nurses say their work suffers from the separation. “Sometimes you can’t concentrate good,” said a 33-year-old nurse who lives in Orange County and who also requested anonymity.

The nurses say it helps to be able to talk to other Filipina nurses facing the same difficulties. But besides trying to buck up each other, they also must be strong for their spouses. The spirits of the Orange County nurse’s husband are sagging. “I encourage him. He’s been losing hope.”

Since he has failed several times to obtain a visa to come here, she is about to make her second trip back home in three years. Her goal is to become pregnant and she has been seeing a fertility doctor here in hopes of succeeding during her six-week vacation. Watching her childbearing years go by, she has become increasingly desperate to start a family, even with a husband living in a different time zone.

Shusterman said some Southern California hospitals have as many as 50 Filipina nurses on their staffs. “We would be in bad shape” without them, he said. Too often, he said, foreign nurses who are administering emergency aid to America’s health-care system are themselves bleeding inside.