ARGENTUM ADVOCATES
Immigration Reform Could Help Ease the Workforce Crisis
By Patrick Connole
Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safe- ty, in lieu of the panel’s hearing titled, “Flat- lining Care: Why Immigrants Are Crucial to Bolstering Our Healthcare Workforce.” The issue of legal immigration goes
R
hand in hand with the chronic problem senior living providers have in finding and retaining qualified workers. The workforce shortage started well before the COVID-19 pandemic, but of course worsened over the last few years and shows no signs of abating even as the pandemic has slowed. During the first 20 months of the pan-
demic, the senior living industry lost more than 100,000 workers, or more than 10 percent of our pre-pandemic employment base. This brings the number of jobs to where the industry was in May of 2015. Argentum sees reforms to the immigra-
tion system as one slice of the pie in which Congress and the Administration can change policies for the betterment of not only the lives of immigrants, but of the se- nior living sector, which sees growing more demand from consumers for long-term care. Workforce shortages are throughout our healthcare system, but one shortage eclips- es all others: the shortage of the workforce needed to care for the unprecedented aging of our nation’s population. The crisis that exists today will elevate to catastrophic lev- els if Congress and the Administration do nothing to prepare. In less than 12 years, for the first time in our nation’s history, there will be more seniors than children with 10,000 Ameri- cans turning age 70 each day and all baby boomers turning 65 or older by 2030. This seismic demographic shift will transform
ecently, Argentum forwarded tes- timony to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on
the U.S. from an aging society to an aged society. More startlingly, U.S. Census projections
show that Americans aged 85 and older— the group predominately requiring the most care—will nearly quadruple between 2000 and 2040 and will continue to increase by nearly 200% in a sixty-year span With the individual risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia doubling in each year over age 80, by 2050, the number of seniors with cognitive im- pairment will increase five-fold, resulting in a massive need for care services as families struggle to deliver these specialized needs. By 2025, there will be a shortage of 1.4
million caregivers just in the assisted living and senior living communities alone. This number does not include the enormous shortages expected in nursing home, home health and other types of geriatric care. Simply put, based on the seismic shift in
our nation’s demographics, there will not be enough care providers for our nation’s seniors. A pipeline of workers and training of workers is needed and construction on that pipeline must start now. Common-sense immigration is a critical
part of the solution. The United States has long relied on foreign-born direct-care workers. In fact, one-sixth of our health care workforce is foreign born. Today, 22% of caregivers in assisted living communities are immigrants, and more work in a variety of
roles that support assisted living communities. Argentum strongly supports targeted
modifications to our current immigration system, such as: streamlining application processes and wait times for direct-care workers; re-developing visa exchange pro- grams with a focus on the needs of the ag- ing; and creating public-private partnership programs that offer career path training in the long-term care continuum for those who are displaced from their country by natural disaster or war. Argentum also backs the establishment of
a permanent visa category specifically for direct-care workers. The projected work- force crisis in long-term-care necessitates bolder action than is currently taking place. The numbers do not lie. Our nation is aging and aging rapidly. The time to act is now. Immigration is just part of our overall ad-
vocacy push on workforce issues, along with strengthening and expanding apprenticeship programs centered on senior living. Our members are working in the states on offering new educational opportunities in junior col- leges, recruiting in high schools, offering new flexible hours and career paths, and giving workers more of an investment in what they do and how they do it on a daily basis. And, it is through your as Argentum Ad-
vocates that we will press our case on immi- gration, and the workforce crisis to Congress and the Administration. Thank you.
Common-sense immigration reform is one of the key priorities in Argentum’s workforce development campaign, aimed at bringing relief to senior living communities in need of workers. Workforce issues will also be front and center during the Argentum Public Policy Institute, March 6-8, 2023, in Washington, DC. For more information and to register, visit
www.argentum.org
44 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022
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