Indian Nurses Sought

Date: Monday, February 17, 2003 4:26 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

Sujana Chakravarty claims that nurses in India are outwitting software
programmers because they are getting paid more. Most labor researchers
say that the average programmer in India earns $300 a month while this
article says nurses earn $84. Perhaps Sujana knows something we don't
about programmer salaries in India.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/10/international/10INDI.html

February 10, 2003
Indian Nurses Sought to Staff U.S. Hospitals
By SARITHA RAI

ANGALORE, India, Feb. 9 Annamma George has not taken an examination in
15 years, since she began her career as a nurse in a leading Bangalore
hospital. But these days she pores over books alongside her 10-year old
son, often studying late into the night. In a few weeks, Ms. George
will take special exams that could qualify her for a nursing job in the
United States.

Ms. George, 38, has attended monthlong classes and taken several
practice licensing exams with questions that test not only medical
education, but an applicant's knowledge of America's multiethnic
society. In whose culture, for example, is a combination of milk and
meat prohibited in the same meal? Catholics? Orthodox Jews? Seventh-day
Adventists? Jehovah's Witnesses?

"Orthodox Jews," she says as she drills herself. "I want to give it my
everything."

Across India, thousands of nurses are studying for these licensing
exams and dreaming of better-paying jobs in the United States, where an
acute shortage of American nurses has sent hospitals scrambling to
recruit in an ever wider network abroad.

Previously, many American hospital recruiters had gone to the
Philippines, Ireland and Canada to find English-speaking nurses but
even those sources of supply are drying up. Now the recruiters are
focusing on India, opening the first major migration route to the
United States for skilled professionals since the collapse of the
Internet boom cooled demand for India's technology workers.

"It is the next revolution," said Sujana Chakravarty, secretary general
of the Trained Nurses Association of India, a trade group in New Delhi.
"And nurses are already outwitting software programmers by getting paid
a lot better."

Until recently, jobs outside India had been hard to come by for the
30,000 nurses graduating each year. Some enterprising ones have headed
to lucrative jobs in the oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf and some
others to Europe, but opportunities in the United States had been
limited.

Now, training and recruiting companies are springing up across India to
prepare nurses for American jobs. Last summer, Vijay Madala, an
entrepreneurial doctor who lives in Dallas, started a training company
called Nurses Anytime and opened a center here in a refurbished
colonial-style bungalow. Dr. Madala tells each class of about 30
nurses, "Work hard and your life will change." More than 70 of his
graduates are now ready for the exams, Dr. Madala said, and by July, he
expects to have 200 trained nurses a month "ready to go."

Since Indian nurses typically take home monthly salaries of about 4,000
rupees, or about $84, compared with American salaries of more than
$4,000 a month, it is no wonder that many Indian nurses are eager to
work in the United States.

Training centers are able to pick the best of the applicants. Nurses
Anytime, for example, chooses those with a graduate nursing degree,
fluency in English and at least three years' experience.

"With the supply of nurses in Canada, Ireland and Philippines drying
up, India is the world's No. 1 source of trained nurses today," Dr.
Madala said.

In Cochin, in the southern state of Kerala, Anisha Cherian, a former
trainer of computer software programmers, has switched to training
nurses, calling it "a better business in these times of software
gloom."

In the central Indian city of Nagpur, Dhanananjay Gawande, a trained
engineer, has also diversified from training software experts into
training nurses. "This business is hot," he said.

Nurses Anytime has joined with Nursefinders Inc., a company based in
Arlington, Tex., that recruits nurses for thousands of hospitals.
Nursefinders pays Dr. Madala a fee for delivering trained nurses who
have passed the nursing and English language exams.

Nurses Anytime has contracts with other American hospitals and nursing
agencies. Representatives of Iasis Healthcare Corporation, a hospital
company based in Franklin, Tenn., traveled here recently to interview a
dozen nurses from Dr. Madala's training center, and they want 30 a
month for the next 12 months, he said.

With a smile, he said he could not live up to the promise conveyed by
his company's name.

Payment for the training varies. Mr. Gawande charges each nurse a fee
of 10,000 rupees, or $210, for training. Dr. Madala said he did not
charge his trainees because his American clients pay the cost. He did
not specify how much they pay him but said American recruiters
generally spend about $10,000 per nurse.

While demand for Indian nurses in the United States is strong, experts
do not expect the exodus to reach the feverish levels as that of Indian
software programmers in the 1990's during the Internet boom.

Difficulty getting work visas is one reason. Nurses can apply for an
H1C work visa, but only 500 are granted each year.

Still, many Indian nurses are undaunted because American employers are
pressing to hire more of them. Sheela Murthy, a Washington immigration
lawyer who advises nurse recruiters and hospitals, said her firm
normally dealt with a dozen immigration cases a month involving Indian
nurses, but she said she had recently started receiving inquiries about
bringing in nurses by the hundreds.

Ms. Murthy, a member of the American Immigration Lawyers' Association,
said the group was lobbying in Washington for eased immigration rules
covering nurses. She cited the projections of the government's own
Health Resources and Services Administration that vacant nursing
positions, which now total more than 110,000, will exceed 700,000 by
2020.

"The U.S. Congress is preoccupied with terrorist threats," she said.
"But, to my mind, the nursing shortage is a colossal flaw in the
American health care system, a life-and-death issue."

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