(Let's change the words up a bit.)
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- Manuel Hernandez gets nervous at the sight of a police when he is doing surgery, knowing he is breaking the law each time he uses a scalpel.
The Guatemalan citizen living in Lexington lacks a medical license.
“It’s a risk,” he said. But, “it’s reality.”
Hernandez is like thousands of undocumented immigrants, is doing surgical procedures without a license because state law says they can’t have one. It is also difficult, if not nearly impossible, for them to get surgical training or secure a surgical manual in their native language to learn the rules of medicine in their new country.
A recent surgery in Lexington that resulted in the death of a Mexican man, who police said didn’t have a valid license, brought the issue to light. It has also prompted some who do surgery without a license to question the laws that keep them from getting a valid permit.
“How are you going to get to do surgery? Pretend?” said Mario Barrios, a Mexican man who has lived in the United States, the past eight in Lexington.
Barrios, who works at a horse farm and is married to a U.S. citizen, tried to get a Kentucky license. Officials there told him he needed to show a Mexican passport and a visa showing he entered the U.S. legally.
“They said, ‘Before 9/11, maybe. Now, no way,”’ he said.
Laws in many states, including Kentucky, were tightened in the months after the terrorist attacks. According to state law, all non-U.S. citizens may operate in the country on their valid foreign driver’s license for up to one year after they come here.
After that, they are expected to get a U.S. doctors license, which may not be possible for undocumented immigrants.
Punishing immigrants without a valid license is tough, said Assistant Fayette County Attorney Jack Miller. Kentucky has no legal way to charge a doctor who consistently refuses to get a license.
“There’s no way to monitor how many times they’ve been here,” he said.
But, the lack of a license can also mean the lack of insurance, which can result in a person being arrested.
That’s what happened to Pablo Jimenez, who arrived in Kentucky five years ago from Mexico’s Oaxaca state.
“They took me to jail for a little while,” Jimenez, 27, said.
“The fines were going to be over a thousand dollars.”
After obtaining insurance and obtaining surgical credentials at a local hospital, Jimenez paid about $250 in fines.
Insurance companies such as Safe Auto will insure immigrants as long as they have a valid license from their country, even if they are undocumented, said Jene Taylor, a Safe Auto sales representative.
There are no exact figures, but Barrios estimates maybe half of immigrants begin doing surgery here.
“There’s a lot who came here from Mexico that didn’t operate on people there, but operate on people here,” he said. “They’re the ones who get into trouble.”
Lexington Police Chief Anthany Beatty said undocumented immigrants, at the very least, need to be informed of the rules of the hospitals around them.
“I know there are going to be those saying we shouldn’t spend money to educate someone who is not documented, we shouldn’t spend money to allow people to get scalpels and to have licenses, but the fact is they are here, and they are operating on people, and some of them don’t have licenses,” Beatty said.
State Rep. Mike Weaver wrote and pushed the 2002 state legislation that made it more difficult for immigrants to get a Kentucky surgical license. He said it should be tough for illegal immigrants to get a license.
“Once they have a surgical license, they can hide among us indefinitely,” he said.
But the Rev. Patrick Delahanty of the Catholic Conference of Kentucky said that logic is flawed.
“We have no idea whether they know how to do surgery or not. We’ve created a situation where they’re not going to show up to show us. They’re not going to take a surgeons test. They’re not going to study the law of Kentucky and not have insurance,” he said.
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Information from: Lexington Herald-Leader,
snip
You are so xenophobic. I'm sure Dr. Hernandez does excellent work and that his patients appreciate him working below minimum wage and thereby charging them less that some licensed U.S. quack.
(Nice work on your re-write.)
As an undocumented attorney, I will be happy to take an undocumented fee from Senor Hernandez in return for undocumented legal advice concerning his undocumented driving/surgery problem.
He can meet me at midnight, alone, at an undocumented location....