[Editor's note: This is a guest post written by Maggie Sullivan. Her bio may be found at the end of the article.]
According to an NPR article on July 27th and a NY Times article on July 28th, Luis Alberto Jimenez came to the US from Guatemala without immigration papers about ten years ago to look for work. He left behind a wife and two children in a small rural town to work as a day laborer in Florida. The following year, in 2000, Mr. Jimenez was hit by a drunk driver in a stolen vehicle, an accident that killed two other people. Mr. Jimenez was left paralyzed and brain-damaged. Once he was stabilized, the Florida hospital found that it could not legally discharge Mr. Jimenez, as no skilled nursing facility (SNF) would accept him given his inability to pay.
As a result, Mr. Jimenez remained at the hospital for three years, until 2003, at which point the hospital, Martin Memorial Medical Center, sought a state judge’s permission to deport Mr. Jimenez to Guatemala. The judge granted his permission, but the patient’s legal guardian, Montejo Gaspar, filed an appeal and emergency request to delay the move. However, without informing the legal guardian, or Mr. Jimenez’s family, the hospital proceeded to charter a flight in July of 2003 for $30,000 and deported the patient to Guatemala. The patient was then admitted and shortly discharged from a hospital in Guatemala. As a nurse, it is my hope that the health care reforms will consider devastating cases, such as that of Mr. Jimenez, and include some measure of protection for those who suffer catastrophic injuries while working in the US, regardless of their immigration status.
In 2004, the state appeals court voided the judicial deportation order upon which the hospital based its actions. Mr. Gaspar filed a lawsuit to cover the cost of medical care in Guatemala, as Mr. Jimenez now lives with his elderly mother in a remote rural town. When the NY Times visited the patient last year, he had not received any medical care for five years, was confined to his bed and suffered regular seizures. On July 27th, a 6-member all-white jury unanimously decided that the Florida hospital did not act unreasonably.
Why would a hospital secretly move a patient without informing his guardian or his family? Why would an all-white jury be considered to be a fair trial by peers for a man who is a Mayan Indian from Guatemala? Why are hospitals and state judges acting in the federal arena of immigration and deportation? But moreover, how is it in the best interest of a severely impaired patient to be deported, to a life without medical care, for an injury caused, recklessly and unlawfully, ironically by a person who is presumably a US citizen?
As accurately noted by the NY Times article, this case is overtly fraught with anti-immigrant sentiment. Undocumented immigrants are targets of many unfounded accusations: that they are bankrupting the medical system; that they utilize public services while not paying taxes; that they are taking jobs from US citizens. None of these myths have been found to be true. On the contrary, immigrants who come to the US greatly benefit the country in multiple ways.
But at the end of the day, in its present form, our health care system is driven by the dollar. And in this climate, which concerns itself more with profit than with health, or with humanity for that matter, hospitals will now be bolstered by this legal decision to “begin planning for discharge as soon as they admit patients they suspect cannot pay” (NPR source). How long will this country with one hand continue to benefit from the work done and risks taken by immigrants, while with the other hand continue to marginalize and discriminate against them?
Maggie Sullivan, RN, MS, FNP-BC, is a family nurse practitioner with an interest in serving immigrant patients and their families. She studied at the University of California-San Francisco and went on to provide primary care services for several years at a federally qualified health center in the Bay Area.