Home Care IS Threatened by Trump’s Deportations

To find out more about Cathy Cress, MSW, the author, click here

63 Million Caregivers Threatened On Trump’s 1st Day

Home care is threatened by Trump’s deportations. 63 million immigrant Care Providers doing home care have been threatened. With the loss of these care providers, we are losing the caregiver pool rapidly, because so many come from immigrant caregivers. Even though Immigrants make up 1/3 of the caregiver pool in the US, they are being deported by the Trump Administration. They are deporting people of color, who have historically been the primary caregivers for family members and home care agencies in the past. For instance, the administration has put new barriers on a type of visa that “brought in a lot of nurses from the Philippines,” said Ms. Smith Sloan. Facing access barriers and a hostile climate in the United States, those nurses are likely to seek more welcoming countries, such as Canada, Germany, and Australia, she said. “The more restrictive we are, the more it’s going to hurt us in the long term.^# Million Care Providers

1 whopping 30% of our caregivers come from other countries, according to a New York Times article.

Home Care is threatened by Trump deportations. According to California Healthline, Americans depend on many such foreign-born workers to care for older, injured, or disabled family members who cannot care for themselves. Immigrants make up 1/3 of the caregiver pool. Nearly 6 million people receive personal care in private homes or group homes, and about 2 million use these services in nursing homes or other long-term care institutions, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis.

Increasingly, the workers who provide that care are immigrants. The foreign-born share of nursing home workers rose three percentage points from 2007 to 2021, to about 18%, according to an analysis of census data by the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.

And foreign-born workers account for a large share of other direct care providers. More than 40% of home health aides, 28% of personal care workers, and 21% of nursing assistants were foreign-born in 2022, compared with 18% of workers overall that year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/fKYGN

Homecare, Nursing Home Workforce Wiped Out on Trump’s First Day

Home-care-is-threatened-by-trump-deporations. That workforce is in jeopardy amid an immigration crackdown President Donald Trump launched on his first day back in office. He signed executive orders that expanded the use of deportations without a court hearing, suspended refugee resettlements, and, more recently, ended humanitarian parole programs for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

In invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans and attempting to revoke legal permanent residency for others, the Trump administration has sparked fear that even those who have followed the nation’s immigration rules could be targeted.

As Trump Arrests, Jails, Deports Brown People Caregiver Pool Decline

As Trump Arrests, Locks Up, Deports Recent Immigrants, Brown People, in General, the Paid Caregiver Pool is at the Bottom of the Barrel

Home Care is threatened by Trump deportations. As Mr. Trump throttles the flow of immigrants into the United States, families are likely to have more and more difficulty finding help. Already, the cancellation of the Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of migrants is causing upheaval. “We’re seeing a jarring, sudden loss of care providers, as people who are being sent back” to their home countries, said Katie Smith Sloan, the head of LeadingAge, an association of community-based organizations that provide services for seniors. In addition to creating gaps in staffing, “the relationships that they’ve built with the residents and clients that they’re serving are just broken,” she said.

“There’s just a general anxiety about what this could all mean, even if somebody is here legally,” said Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, a nonprofit representing more than 5,000 nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other services for aging patients. “There’s concern about unfair targeting, unfair activity that could just create trauma, even if they don’t ultimately end up being deported, and that’s disruptive to a health care environment.”

Shutting down pathways for immigrants to work in the United States, Smith Sloan said, also means many other foreign workers may go instead to countries where they are welcomed and needed.

“We are in competition for the same pool of workers,” she said.

How You Can Help

What can you do? Contact your Congressman and tell them that you do not agree with these cuts. Go to a town meeting if your congressman holds one. Join Indivisable. Together, we can solve this crisis in our democracy. If you feel paralyzed by fear or have not protested in some way about losing democracy to Trump, refuse to remain silent because if we lose due process, you could be on a plane to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), or South Sudan for the rest of your life.

Find out more about Cathy Cress, MSW, at her website