Public Health Secretary Joseph Kevin Villagomez said they met with a U.S. Homeland Security team four months ago to discuss the fate of the Commonwealth Health Center, its nurses and doctors when the federalization of local immigration system takes effect next year.
Villagomez said in an interview yesterday that the meeting focused specifically on the issue of granting U.S. work visas to CHC’s guest workers.
During the meeting, he said, they expressed grave concern about the possibility of losing many of their guest workers.
The CNMI has over 200 nurses from the Philippines and physicians from Canada who came to the islands under local immigration rules.
CHC also has physicians who are U.S. licensed but are not U.S. citizens.
Villagomez said federal authorities told him that “no new immigration status will be implemented, which means they are going to be using the current federal work permits.”
Villagomez believes CHC’s nonresident nurses will eventually get green cards under federal immigration rules “because the need for them is great.”
But this new status will also allow the nurses to work in the U.S.
“When that happens, the health care system in the CNMI will collapse,” Villagomez said.
Guam, he noted, lost two anesthesiologists to Hawaii recently.
“Once [our nurses] get [their green cards] I cannot keep them here. There’s nothing I can do to make them stay here. They can go elsewhere,” he said.
The federal team, he said, assured him that they will look into these concerns.
What they really want to know, Villagomez said, are the things they can do to make sure that their nurses and other medical professionals will stay on island despite having U.S. work visas.
“That’s the thing we need to negotiate, and were waiting for further discussions with [Homeland Security],” he said.
Villagomez believes higher salaries can motivate healthcare workers to stay on island.
But Joey Camero, a nurse and the unit manager of CHC’s emergency room, said most of the hospital’s nonresident nurses have no intention to move to the U.S. even if they are granted better immigration status.
Most of them, he said, already consider the CNMI as their home.
Unlike the states, he added, the CNMI is also way closer to the Philippines.
Camero believes that granting nonresident nurses green cards will allow Public Health to maximize the use of its personnel when escorting patients for medical referrals to Hawaii.
