Trump wants an immigration deal. He could start with caregivers.
Days after the election, President Donald Trump gave an interview saying his deportation policy was “too tough” and he’d be open to some sort of immigration reform deal to protect workers.
Key points
- “We need to have mechanisms where people can come into this country and do this work.” Immigration reform has felt politically impossible in Washington for years, but after the brutal defeat Republicans suffered in the midterms, there’s a suddenly a much stronger case that this corner of the fight is different.
- Trump has also expressed new openness to immigration reform.
- A growing menu of options Over the last year or so, three different proposals have emerged that suggest that caregiving is the immigration battle Washington is finally ready to fight.
With family caregivers growing in number and nursing homes turning residents away because they can’t find staff, caregiving may be the one corner of immigration policy Congress is actually willing to fix.
Additional details
- With around 40 cosponsors from both parties and Problem Solvers Caucus backing, the Dignity Act has more bipartisan traction than most immigration bills in years.
- These are workers, primarily women, who help older adults and people with disabilities bathe, dress, eat, take their medication, and generally get through a day, either in a nursing home or in someone’s own home.
- To close the gap, policy experts say the United States should bring more immigrants into a sector that’s already about one-third immigrant, while also protecting the roughly 12 percent of current direct care workers who are noncitizens, some of them undocumented.
- PHI, a national nonprofit that researches and advocates for the direct care workforce, projects 9.6 million direct care job openings between 2025 and 2035, the bulk of which will come from existing workers changing fields, retiring, or otherwise leaving the workforce.
- Coordinating care for older adults is a problem that reaches families in every corner of the country, and even comfortable households wonder whether they can secure a dignified life for an aging parent, or, eventually, for themselves.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
Advertisement
Every article behind this summary — 1 article from 1 outlet
Get stories like this in your inbox.
Subscribe — it's freeOne free email at 6am — your topics, deduplicated, five minutes. No account, no paywall.