Doyle Velasco
English 165 AK
Ms. Erpelo
12/15/05
Final Draft
The Working Nurse
The definition of a nurse, is person educated and trained to care for the sick or disabled. The job of a nurse is to listen, care for, and tend to a patient’s every need, while learning and developing more as time goes on. Nurses come from all over the world, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. From the 1960’s until today, the Philippines has been the leading exporters of nurses and with the 1965 Immigration Act, many Filipino nurses are coming to the United States. The 1965 Immigration Act by President Lyndon B. Johnson brought an end to quotas based on national origin, instead immigrants were being admitted by their skills and profession rather than by their nationality. Now more and more nurses from the Philippines and all over the world were coming to the United States to find a good job, great opportunities, and a better life, and that was the plan of Marlene Velasco. In a recent interview, I’ve learned that Marlene Velasco is part of Filipino-American nursing history by being born and raised in the Philippines and studying to become a nurse there. I wanted to learn more about her background and her struggle to become a nurse. I met with her in her night job at St. Francis Pavilion, Daly City. We talked in a lobby-type room during her break and I asked her questions like where she was born in the Philippines, what schools she attended there, about her family, how she came to the United States. I started the interview knowing very little about the life in the Philippines and how it is hard to make a living there and ended the interview having a whole new respect for the Filipino population. Marlene arrived to the United States in late 1985, Marlene’s father, who was living and working in the U.S. already, petitioned for her and her siblings to come to America. Marlene had a degree in nursing from the Philippines and like many nurse from...