Maribel Hipolito Interview, History 150 Spring 2016, Conducted by Dana Panganiban, Immigration from the Philippines, March 24, 2016.
A.
The following interview was conducted in person. In order to display the most important content, I had to edit out a few sections of the interview. For better quality sound, I rented a Blue Snowball Microphone from the JMU library. I used the application, GarageBand, to record the interview. The interview took place in the quiet kitchen of my interviewee.
B.
Maribel Hipolito was born and raised in Pangasinan, a province in the Philippines. As the eldest of seven younger brothers, Maribel contributed around the house as a source of financial support. Her mother and father were additional providers for the family. At the age of 22, Maribel pursued nursing as a career and moved to Dubai to further her studies. After spending two years in Dubai, Maribel immigrated to the United States. Today Maribel resides in Virginia, working as a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit of Chesapeake General Hospital. She is married and has five children.
C.
Until July 4th, 1946, the Philippines was a colony of the United States. However, the Philippines still relied on the United States for financial support. According to an article from the American Journal of Public Health in 2010, “…the Philippines has developed explicit internal policies and practices that encourage the production of nurses for export and operate in tandem with state influenced policies in receiving countries to ease the process of emigration.” Many Filipinos practiced nursing in order to find a better life away from poverty and to earn a higher income. The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration was implemented in 1974, aiding Filipinos in search for careers abroad. According to the article, about 88,000 nurses left the Philippines between 1992 and 2003.
Brush, BL. “The Potent Lever Of Toil: Nursing Development And Exportation In The Postcolonial Philippines.” American Journal Of Public Health 100.9 (2010): 1572-1581 10p. CINAHL Plus with Full Text. Web. 16 Mar. 2016.
Transcription:
DP: Can you please state your name?
Mrs. Hipolito: My name is Maribel Hipolito.
DP: Why did you leave the Philippines and come to the United States?
Mrs. Hipolito: I left the Philippines 20 years ago to find a better job, but I didn’t go to United States right away. I went to UAE, which is in Dubai. I stayed there for 2 years, finished my contract, and then came here after that. And since then I’ve been here um… I came here through a working visa. I have to work really hard to get that test done, nursing and English test. You need to pass that so you can get a visa to come here. And then coming here, you need to get someone to petition you for immigrant visa. So I have to find a petitioner who is supposed to be a person we are working for, and um… I got lucky to find someone to do that who is an owner of a nursing home who I worked with for around 8 years.
DP: What did you expect the United States to be like, and did it meet your expectations?
Mrs. Hipolito: It did actually. Yup. Over my expectations. I… all my expectations were met, and I actually went over because I worked really hard to get to this position of my life.
DP: What did you expect it to be like?
Mrs. Hipolito: I expected it to be like what I have right now: a better job, um… good family, a better way of living, and I like it here in Virginia because we have the four seasons.
DP: Unlike the Philippines where is raining…
Mrs. Hipolito: Right. Unlike in the Philippines we only have two seasons: the rainy days and the summer days.
DP: Can you repeat the actual process of immigrating, like more specifically because I know you said that you had to have a petitioner but what was the start? How would you begin?
Mrs. Hipolito: So to come here… Well since I’m a nurse, well you need to be a registered nurse from the country you are coming from, which is the Philippines. And then United States got this policy for us to pass the nursing test and the English proficiency test, and once you pass that, which they call it CGFNS, then you can apply for a working visa to get here.
DP: What is CG…?
Mrs. Hipolito: CGFNS?
DP: Yes. What does that stand for?
Mrs. Hipolito: That stands for…
DP: If you don’t remember it’s okay.
Mrs. Hipolito: Uh… It’s Commission on Graduate Foreign Nurses.
DP: How did you choose nursing as your career?
Mrs. Hipolito: Ever since I was a child, I really wanted to be a nurse, because I thought at that time this was the only way to come here to America. My aunt who came here when… a year after I was born and she was able to give a better life to her family. So I wanted to do the same thing. That’s why I took nursing.
DP: Do you like your profession now?
Mrs. Hipolito: Yes. Very much.
DP: So, if there was another profession to move to the United States, would you have chosen it instead of nursing or do you think it is gender specific? Like, did choosing nursing have anything to do with your gender?
Mrs. Hipolito: No because during my time, I have male nursing, co-nursing students and the reason why they are taking nursing is because they want to come to the United States. But actually, taking nursing is not really… it’s actually my chosen career, which I think I was right choosing it because I love taking care of people. I love helping people.
DP: Where did you train in the Philippines to study nursing?
Mrs. Hipolito: I finished my nursing in our province, Pangasinan, and then I started my career there too. I started working in a children’s hospital for 4 years and then moved to a medical surgical adult unit for another 2 years. And then from there I went to Dubai. I went to an OBGYN unit and then to a medical surgical unit again for 2 years I went back and forth. And then coming here to America after that, I started taking care of geriatric patients, which is a nursing home they call it. And then from there I moved up to the medical surgical nursing up to now until I reached critical nursing that I have right now.
DP: Why did you move to Dubai? Out of all the countries you could have chosen, why Dubai?
Mrs. Hipolito: Then Dubai was offering good benefits, and me and my best friend took advantage of it. It was all free. Transport, clothing food, airfare. So that’s a good deal for us, the only thing… Whatever our wage is, is ours.
DP: Were there other countries you could have chosen or was it only Dubai that was open?
Mrs. Hipolito: No there are other countries who are offering these opportunities but then Dubai was our best place to go to.
DP: Was it easier immigrating to Dubai than immigrating to the United States?
Mrs. Hipolito: Yes.
DP: Did you face any challenges during any of your travels?
Mrs. Hipolito: Coming from the Philippines to Dubai, well at first of course. There is that feeling of um, nervousness because it was my first times traveling and being away from my family. But then after that I was fine because I got used to it.
DP: Did you face any challenges traveling to the United States?
Mrs. Hipolito: Yes. The first challenge I did was during my visa processing because it took me months to wait for the approval of the visa. Then coming here I needed to find a job who will um help me process my immigrant visa so I can stay here permanently.
DP: So you had to find a job before you actually moved to the United States? Did someone have to look for the job for you?
Mrs. Hipolito: Yes. My aunt whose friend is an owner of a travel agency helped me out with that. She was able to find a job for me and helped me do all the visa processing.
DP: Can you describe the transition from living in the Philippines and living in America?
Mrs. Hipolito: Transitioning from Philippine life to um United States life is a big difference, but being so young then um I was so flexible adapting to the new values, the new beliefs which is way different from where I came from.
DP: Were there any difficulties, like language barriers?
Mrs. Hipolito: Not really. It’s just the way, you know. People here are used to talking in English, so coming here you have that accent, but I didn’t really have a hard time because English was used as the learning language back in home.
DP: What were some advantages of moving to America, and also what were some of the disadvantages.
Mrs. Hipolito: Well first, there’s only one disadvantage. Being away from my family, from my parents, from my brothers. But the rest are all advantages. Like, having a good job, better salary to support my family back home, living in an area which is not overpopulated. You can drive your own vehicle. Um you get to know other people, other people from different places.
DP: How were you treated by other Americans after you immigrated?
Mrs. Hipolito: I had no problem with them at all because I can speak English, and they can understand how I feel, what I say, so I didn’t really have a hard time. Um… I plan to retire here in America since I’m a US citizen now. I prefer to live here until I expire, it’s because all my family is here already. I was able to bring my parents and my brothers. They have their own families over here, and I think medical-wise it’s safer to stay here than in the Philippines. In the Philippines, if you live far from the city, you are far from the nice hospitals with all the gadgets that they need. So maybe just coming back and forth just to visit some of my relatives who are still back home and visiting the nice beaches back home which we always do. That is what I’m going to do when I retire, and I’m just hoping the United States will still open up more jobs for nurses from the Philippines because back home we still have thousands of nurses who don’t have jobs or they have jobs but they’re not actually getting enough salary that they are supposed to. That’s why a lot of them migrate to other countries.
DP: What other countries do they immigrate to since the United States is more strict?
Mrs. Hipolito: They go to the United Kingdom. They go to the Arab countries… They go to…I guess to Switzerland or other countries… Iceland.
DP: Was it open before?
Mrs. Hipolito: They just opened Canada. A lot of countries needed nurses so we still have great opportunities. I tried to tell my relatives back home who are still in high school, if they can go to nursing profession because I think being in nursing profession, is the best way to find faster, better jobs than all other professions. But of course you need to have the heart in being a nurse.
DP: Was it hard to get your relatives to immigrate to America? You said helped them move here. What did you have to do?
Mrs. Hipolito: Well, at first I was able to get my parents to come here, and according to immigration, once you petition your parents, they give them immigrant visas. They can bring their kids back home, 21 and under. My four brothers who were 21 and below at that time were able to come with them and got lucky. So they’ve been here since then. But those brothers of mine who were 21 and over came later because the processing was longer.
DP: How old were you when you immigrated? Like, when you started the process?
Mrs. Hipolito: I left the Philippines when I was 22, but I’ve been practicing nursing then since I was 18 because I got… I graduated nursing when I was 18. The reason why is because I started going to school early back then. The school administrators were not really strict when you can start schooling, as long as you can read and write and you can pass their test to go to school. So, that’s the reason why I got into school earlier than other people, so I graduated early.
DP: Was nursing different in the United States compared to the Philippines? Did you have to learn anything new?
Mrs. Hipolito: Of course. Well, nursing prerequisite is the same but with all the modern apparatuses. Over here you need to get used to it and go to classes to be able to use them. And a lot of, like I said, a lot of things here are very modern which we don’t have back home. Although we know those gadgets, we learn them, but we were not able to get a chance to use them because we don’t have it back home.
DP: What state did you immigrate to?
Mrs. Hipolito: I immigrated… my first place when I came here I went to New Jersey.
DP: Why did you choose New Jersey?
Mrs. Hipolito: That’s where… because my aunt lived there, and I prefer to go there so I have the support.
DP: What made you move to Virginia?
Mrs. Hipolito: I moved to Virginia because after I brought my parents here, they were not happy in Jersey. There was nothing else to there, and my relatives are here in Virginia. I just let them come here and followed them.
DP: Thank you for your time.
Mrs. Hipolito: You’re welcome.
Conclusion:
Overall, I believe the interview process was performed in a timely manner. If I could repeat the interview, I would have been prepared to ask more in-depth questions and spoken more clearly. There were times when I felt like the interview could have flowed better. I did not have a hard time staying on script; however the few divergences were positive. I was able to obtain more information than I would have originally asked for.