Since the catastrophic 9/11 attack on the American heartland, New York City, the United States in many respects has never been the same again. Events, both natural and man-made, have seemingly accelerated and conspired to complicate things, pushing perilously the former land of milk and honey closer to the edge of jobless recovery.

The new reality of long-term unemployment exacerbated by the economic downturn has created a crisis of historic proportions. Poverty experts have said that the social safety net is not enough to cushion impact of the most severe crisis since the Great Depression.

In fact, the social safety net is now showing strains -- weighed down as more people are forced by circumstances to rely on public assistance for the first time in their lives, painfully realizing they are losing their middle class status as they slide down to the ranks of the new poor.

“Even as the American recovery shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits,” an article published recently in the New York Times claimed.

Compared to previous downturns, many people managed to recover, even prospered, but this time could be different. Painting a dire picture of the US job market, the aforesaid article added: “An unusual constellation of forces – some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession – might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives.”

A clear manifestation of the severity of the situation is the popping up of tent cities or shanty towns on abandoned land made up of people who have lost their homes in the subprime meltdown. It is the contemporary Hooverville, a reference to pre-war President Hoover under whose watch the Great Depression began to unravel.

Jobless people who used to live from paycheck to paycheck are the first ones to lose their home. Losing their job and income means failure to meet mortgage payments. Those with family and friends willing to take them in are still lucky but many have no other option but to live in tents.

Worse, for these newly impoverished people, the current financial crisis only heightens the unfairness of the rich, read corporate America, getting off the hook by getting bailed out by the government while the middle class and the poor are the ones taking the full hit.

For me, every time there’s news about hard times befalling America makes me sad. I believe most Filipinos feel the same way since America and our country have gone a long way, we have shared history, belief systems and democratic aspirations. And what affects America affects the whole world.

Hence, viewed against this backdrop, I have grown pessimistic about the prospects of young Filipino professionals migrating to the United States, especially those in the health care services like nurses.

For one, with the unemployment situation in America continuing to be bleak, locals in the US are now being enticed to become care-givers or certified nursing assistants to take up the slack caused by lack of foreign nurses who now virtually have to pass the eye of a needle to enter the US as RNs.

The visa retrogression, entailing a longer period for processing papers, is also one big obstacle to hurdle for our nurses to realize their American Dream. The only hope, it seems, in lifting the visa retrogression lies in the immigration reform. But with the legislative debates centering on the health insurance bill continue to remain unresolved, our Filipino nurses could be in for a long wait.
Email: businessagenda_report@yahoo.com.ph