Defensor: Pinoys have right to live, work wherever they can
ANAKALUSUGAN party-list Rep. Mike Defensor has renewed his call for the scrapping of the 7,000 annual cap on overseas deployable healthcare workers, insisting that the quota’s continued enforcement violates the Constitution.
“We maintain that Filipinos enjoy the right to live and work wherever they can achieve the best quality of life for their families,” Defensor, a mayoral candidate in Quezon City, said on Sunday.
“Our healthcare workers are entitled to sell their skills to the highest-paying employers around the world – whether in the United States or in the United Kingdom,” Defensor said.
Defensor made the call as he bared that another batch of 9,788 Philippine-educated nurses managed to take the U.S. licensure examination for the first time in 2021, despite tough movement restrictions associated with the lingering pandemic.
“The number is higher by 63 percent compared to the 6,004 Philippine nursing graduates that took America’s eligibility test, or the NCLEX, for the first time in 2020, excluding repeaters,” Defensor said, citing figures from the U.S. National Council of State Boards of Nursing Inc.
The NCLEX, or the National Council Licensure Examination, is usually the last hurdle in America’s nurse licensure process. Nursing graduates pay $200 to take the NCLEX in a testing center in Makati City and in other locations around the world.
