Japan faces a nursing shortage. The nation has the world's oldestpopulation but not enough young people to help care for them. Now Japanis loosening up its immigration policies and turning to foreign nursesto help make up for that deficit.
Mila Bustalino hasworked many jobs during her 20 years living in Japan. After migratingfrom the Philippines, she cleaned houses, washed dishes and babysat forwealthy families so that she could send money to her own family backhome.
But for the past two years she has worked at a nursinghome, taking care of elderly Japanese. She gives a few examples of whatcaregivers do.
"Serving them their food snacks, giving them a bath, so our main reason, to make the old people happy," she said.
Soon, Bustalino may have more Filipino co-workers.
InMay, around 300 trained nurses and caregivers from the Philippines willarrive in Japan and begin working at hospitals and homes for theelderly.
But their recruitment, which is allowed under afree-trade agreement Tokyo signed with Manila three years ago, has comeunder fire from the Japan Nursing Association. It says the Filipinosmight not have sufficient training or understanding of Japanese cultureto work as caregivers. Plus, it says, they will take jobs away fromskilled Japanese nurses.
But many of the imported workers maywind up doing basic care-giving jobs in nursing homes - bathing andfeeding patients. The pay for this work will far exceed that of trainednurses working the Philippines, but many labor analysts say mostJapanese do not want this type of low-paying, low-skilled job.
MartinSchultz, senior economist at the Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo,says Japan needs its young workforce in higher paying professions, toincrease the tax base that goes to support senior citizens.
"Japansociety has a major aging problem, this means there needs to beservices for aged people. This is usually not a high-wage,high-productivity sector, in many countries this sector is covered byimmigration, by low-wage immigrants," he said.
But Japanese nurses are not the only ones who are cautious about inviting Filipinos to work here.
MarianTanizaki is director of the Philippines Center, a support group formigrant workers in Tokyo. She worries that Filipino nurses will havefew opportunities to advance their careers in Japan and just beregarded as cheap labor.
"My concern, being a Filipino, is thattoo difficult for Filipinos. Although, I am not undermining theintellectual capacity of these Filipino nurses, but I think they arebetter off in English-speaking countries where they can express theirtalents, their abilities and they are freer to work and they will behappy," she said.
Caregiver Mila Bustalino says those concernsare exaggerated. She notes the Filipino nurses will receive languagetraining and says they can adjust easily to their new environment.
She adds that the salary here makes up for any of the problems the Filipino workers might encounter.
"If you have the courage or interest to learn more, come to Japan, you will get more money," she said.
IfJapan's experiment in allowing foreign nurses to work here does notwork out, there may be other options in a few years. The government issupporting research to create highly skilled, care-giving robots thatcould start working at nursing homes within five years.