At the close of business on Monday last week Cabrini nursing home in Westchester had to lay off seven full-time employees, all of them Haitian caregivers freshly ineligible to work because of a Trump administration policy shift on immigration.<\/p>\n
The workers were mostly nursing assistants who fed, bathed and groomed elderly residents, said Simone Smith, who heads the organization\u2019s human resources department. They were usually the first person the residents saw when they woke up in the morning and the last person they saw before going to bed, she said.<\/p>\n
The departures left \u201ca void in staffing that we’re going to struggle to fill,\u201d Smith said. \u201cIt’s not easy to acquire staff in this industry. One, because typically you don’t have a lot of prospective employees knocking down your doors to work at a nursing home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many nursing homes, homecare agencies, and other medical facilities are in a similar bind, scrambling to fill vacancies created by the Trump administration\u2019s decision to end a humanitarian relief program for Haitian immigrants allowing them to live and work legally in the United States because of dire conditions back home.<\/p>\n
The end of TPS could have life-altering implications for hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants throughout New York and the country who, with a stroke of a pen, find their immigration status in limbo. But the Trump administration\u2019s policy shift also has implications for a healthcare system that is heavily dependent on immigrant caregivers.<\/p>\n
Immigrants make up 30% of the country\u2019s direct care workers, which include home health aides, personal care aides, and nursing assistants who work in nursing homes, residential care facilities, and home health environments, according to a July study<\/a> by KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation. And that share is especially high in New York state, where the study found 60% of direct care workers are immigrants.<\/p>\n Moreover, a significant portion of healthcare workers are TPS recipients \u2014 over 15%, according to a study<\/a> published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Across the country, 6% of the nation\u2019s direct care workers are Haitian, according to the KFF study.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aThere is real concern about this court decision and its implications on the provision of care in nursing homes and assisted living facilities throughout New York,\u201d said Stephen Hanse, the president and CEO of the New York State Health Facilities Association, which represents over 450 nursing homes and assisted living providers across the state.<\/p>\n \u201cNew York state is in a long-term care workforce crisis,\u201d Hanse added, noting that the over-65 population is the fastest-growing age group<\/a> in the state. \u201cWe are struggling to recruit and retain long-term care workers\u2026 So this decision has the potential to further deplete our workers who provide direct care to residents, and really our most vulnerable residents.\u201d<\/p>\n Karen Lipson, with LeadingAge NY, a group that represents some 400 nonprofit and government-sponsored long-term care and aging services providers, said it\u2019s difficult for the organizations she represents to fill and replace positions, in part because the roles require significant training.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of our members have open positions, and this will just add to the number of open positions that they have to fill,\u201d Lipson said.<\/p>\n The end of TPS comes amid a nationwide shortage<\/a> of home health aides, personal care aides, nursing assistants and other long-term and eldercare workers. The humanitarian immigration protection is for individuals from countries deemed too dangerous to return to because of war, disease, environmental disaster or some other \u201cextraordinary and temporary<\/a>\u201d condition.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court in June cleared the way<\/a> for the Trump administration to end TPS for over 300,000 Haitians across the country. The protections officially expired on July 27. That includes protections for some 40,000 Haitians in New York state, according to data<\/a> compiled by Phillip Connor, research fellow at Princeton University. On Wednesday<\/a>, a federal district court judge, guided by the high court\u2019s ruling, officially allowed TPS to end for Haitian immigrants.<\/p>\n