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Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History. By Catherine Ceniza Choy. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. xiv, 257 pp. Cloth, $59.95, ISBN 0-8223-3052-0. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8223-3089-X.)
Especially since the 1965 Immigration Act made it easier for skilled workers to become permanent residents of the United States, U.S. hospitals have relied on the labor of foreign-trained nurses. From 1965 to 1988, over seventy thousand nurses came to the United States to work. Despite having comparatively greater nursing shortages, the Philippines was the leading supplier. In 1989, Filipino nurses constituted 73 percent of foreign nurse graduates in the United States. In Empire of Care, Catherine Ceniza Choy tells their story, paying particularly astute attention to the colonial roots of post-World War II migration.
According to Choy, U.S. colonialism in the early twentieth century laid the groundwork for later migrations by creating American-style nursing training programs, fostering an Americanized nursing work culture,...