In the long run, this guts the domestic nurse workforce. Good candidates who might consider nursing as a career will look elsewhere due to the relatively lower ware. The way to INCREASE the supply of nurses is to raise the wage, not allow others to come in and dampen salary.
Just what we need, higher health care costs.
Personally I think many American women and gay men are just too lazy to complete the studies to become nurses. I'm all for importing hard-working legal immigrants.
I don't think wages are the issue. I have a sister-in-law, and a sister has a step-son who are trained nurses. They both left the profession because of working conditions, not because of wages. Both earn less now than they could as nurses, but working conditions drove them away.
And, BTW, in both cases the problem was gov't legislation, not problems with the hospitals or doctors.
Salaries are rising, and rapidly! In the market I'm in, starting salaries 2.5 months ago were $20.82. Now the starting salary is $24.00, and more increases are expected.
It's supply and demand. In spite of the influx of foreign workers, the demand is not being met, so prices are rising. Also, there are not enough nursing programs here to train the number of people who want the training. There is a two year or more wait to get in nursing programs in the colleges here.
I don't know about nursing, but for software engineering this does not seem to be the case. It seems that cheaper engineers like those from India make more ambitious software projects financially feasible. Such projects need to involve engineers who understand the target culture and business practices...which means us more expensive engineers from the U.S. have more opportunities which tend to offset those that are lost.
On balance I can't say if there are more or fewer opportunities then there would be without such interference, but I can definitely tell you that the software consumer is a big winner.
As with any job, why spend years and $$$ getting a nursing degree, when the jobs will be taken by immigrants?
"I have no great love of the nursing profession as it has a large union agenda."
The majority of registered nurses are not union. The unions have an appearence primarily in NY, NJ and California. In fly-over country nursing unions are the exception, not the rule.
That's purely a California thing. Unionized nurses are unheard of in flyover country.