Filipino organizations in Alaska have worked to bring a documentary to Alaska called “Nurse Unseen.” The film will be shown at the Anchorage Museum tonight to spotlight a group of immigrants whose service and sacrifices are often overlooked.
It’s a theme that resonates in Alaska, where Filipinos are the largest immigrant group. They can be found at work in hospitals, nursing homes and in many jobs that are hard to fill.
Filipino nurses have a long history of filling in the gaps in the nation’s healthcare system that go back more than a century, when the U.S. colonized the Philippines and the military Americanized training for Filipino nurses.
When producers of “Nurse Unseen” began work on their documentary in 2019, they hoped to tell the story of how Filipino nurses are essential to the national healthcare system. Then came COVID-19.
“That was really the impetus for us to step into action and really move in high gear,” said Michele Josue, the film’s director. Josue also worked with another Filipino film producer, Carl Velayo, and Joe Arciaga, a Filipino-American nurse and writer.
In late 2020, a report called “Sins of Omission” brought everything into sharp focus. The National Nurses United exposé found that Filipinos made up 4 percent of the registered nurse workforce -- but next to white nurses, had the second highest death rate.
“At the height of COVID, they made up 31.5% of COVID nurse deaths, which is a really shocking number,” Josue said.
So how is it that almost a third of the nurses who died during the pandemic were Filipino? Josue says many support their families back home, so they take extra shifts and jobs that are hard to fill, like in the Emergency Room. Hospitals also recruit them, because they get good training in the Philippines.
“Filipinos are the unsung backbone of health care,” Josue said, “and that's just a fact.”
Josue says Filipinos gravitate to health care because of a deeply ingrained cultural value called kapwa, which emphasizes the importance of community connectedness, love and caring.
“There are so many other industries, professions, that really rest on the shoulders of hardworking immigrants all over the country,” Josue said. “There should be more narratives out there that outline immigrants in a positive light. It shouldn't be a bad word.”
Rebecca Carillo, a nurse from Juneau, says it’s true that many Filipino immigrants come in search of opportunity.
“We came to this country to work and to make a better life for ourselves,” said Carillo, who retired after 25 years working in the state of Alaska’s Women Infants and Children’s (WIC) nuitrition program.
She says it’s a job that once took her up the Kuskokwim River to check out an innovative service designed by Ester Ocampo, a Filipino nutritionist who traveled to fish camps to work with Yup'ik mothers.
“It's meeting people where they are,” Carillo recalled, “women who were processing fish, children who were running around, babies on their mother's back -- with Ester trying to ask questions and write stuff down, sometimes trying to entertain kids to stay still for the measurements.”
Carillo says this is one example of the many ways that Filipino immigrants make a difference in the lives of Alaskans. She says you’ll also find them teaching children in remote communities, where it’s hard to recruit educators – or in her hometown of Juneau, caring for people’s parents and grandparents.
“Ninety percent of health aides and LPNs that staff the (Juneau) Pioneer home are Filipinos,” Carillo said. “So, if all of those folks are gone, I don't know how that place is going to continue to run.”
Although Alaska did not lose any Filipino nurses to the pandemic, Carillo says it’s important to recognize their contributions, which have been overshadowed by a wave of national anti-immigration policies.
From fish processing plants to staffing the Anchorage airport and post office, Carillo says Filipino immigrants hold down many jobs that help to fill Alaska’s labor shortages. But she says immigrants are often unseen, just like the women in the film, “Nurse Unseen.”
