Monday
As we watch the Trump administration trample all over American values with its treatment of asylum seekers at our southern border, it’s worth reminding ourselves how much we rely on immigrants. I’ve been reading Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, an Ethiopian immigrant of Indian parentage, who at one point has a character expound on immigrant contributions.
Marion Stone is working as a student intern in a Bronx hospital and is so engulfed in his work that he hasn’t had a chance to encounter American racism. Initially assuming he could have gotten internships at other hospitals, he learns (this in anticipation of Donald Trump’s comment about immigrants from “shit hole countries”) that his background limits him to a shit hole hospital. Fellow intern B. C. Gandhi explains America’s class system:
“See here,” he said, taking a saltshaker and pepper shaker and putting them side by side. “This pepper shaker is our kind of hospital. Call it a—”
“Call it a shit hole, mon,” said Nestor
“No, no. Let’s call it an Ellis Island hospital. Such hospitals are always in places where the poor live. The neighborhood is dangerous. Typically such hospitals are not part of a medical school. Got it? Now take this saltshaker. That is a Mayflower hospital, a flagship hospital, the teaching hospital for a big medical school. All the medical students and interns are in super white coats with badges that say SUPER MAYFLOWER DOCTOR. Even if they take care of the poor, it’s honorable, like being in the Peace Corps, you know. Every American medical student dreams of an internship in a Mayflower hospital. Their worst nightmare is coming to an Ellis Island hospital.”
Gandhi goes on to explain how Medicare supports the Ellis Island hospitals, which however must rely upon foreign interns. He tells the narrator that he is “one of hundreds who came as part of this annual migration that keeps hospitals like ours going”:
B.C. sat back in his chair. “Whatever America needs, the world will supply. Cocaine? Colombia steps to the plate. Shortage of farmworkers, corn detasselers? Thank God for Mexico. Baseball players? Viva Dominica. Need more interns? India, Philippines zindabad [long live].”
Gandhi then asks Marion where the interns go once they have completed their residencies:
I shook my head. I didn’t know.
“Anywhere. That’s the answer. We go to the small towns that need us. Like Toejam, Texas, or Armpit, Alaska. The kinds of places American doctors won’t go and practice.”
When I was undergoing treatment for pericarditis and myocarditis in rural Maryland two years ago, every doctor I visited (and I visited a lot!) was ethnic Indian. The area was very, very fortunate to have them.
Most Americans, when their minds aren’t clouded by Trumpism, know this. It’s what gives me hope that we’ll recover from this nightmare.
