Market Screening: Nurse Unseen
The Philippines is the leading exporter of professional nurses in the world. In the United States, almost one-third of all immigrant nurses are Filipino. Since 1965, over 150,000 Filipino nurses have immigrated to the U.S. Yet, there has been little to no representation of Filipino-American nurses in U.S. mainstream media.
Furthermore, research has shown how Filipino-American nurses died at a disproportionate rate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Filipino nurses make up 4% of the registered nursing population in the United States, but at the height of the pandemic, accounted for 31.5% of the nation's COVID nurse deaths.
On film, no one has yet told the deeper and complicated history of Filipino nursing and U.S. colonialism and its direct ties to what we are experiencing now in the age of the pandemic and the frightening resurgence of anti-Asian hatred and violence. Nurse Unseen explores why so many Filipino nurses left the Philippines to work in the U.S. healthcare system and why they have been so disproportionately affected by the pandemic.