Immigrant healthcare workers tend to immigrate from Texas

On a cold December day just over 50 years ago, Pilar Guerrero arrived in this country from Mexico with her parents by her side. She was 9, she recalls, and didn’t know a bit of English.

Guerrero, now a family doctor, smiled as he sat across from a young girl and her mother, then proceeded to examine them. The girl and her mother are among the new immigrants to Chicago from South and Central America.

“I can kind of reflect myself in them,” Guerrero said. “These young parents are so brave to do all they can to give themselves and their child a better life.”

In late summer, when the first migrant buses from Texas began arriving in Chicago, Guerrero volunteered to work in the clinic and medical care program set up by Stroger County Hospital. of Cook to provide necessary and urgent care to migrants as part of the city and state’s efforts to ensure their well-being.

For Guerrero, who is set to retire after working as an emergency physician at Stroger Hospital for two decades, it was personal. “It’s like a full circle,” she said. It’s a chance to give back after realizing a dream that seemed distant when she was brought to this country.

In addition to serving as their doctor, when meeting young girls, Guerrero instinctively reminds them that they are now in a place where they can learn English and that “the opportunities are there, because they were for me.”

For many healthcare workers who are immigrants – or children of immigrants – caring for immigrants empowers them to continue their work and helps sow immigrants a seed of hope for their future in this country. , despite the uncertainty they face.

“It’s a way to give them hope,” Guerrero said.

Dr. Pilar Guerrero examines Darling Vielma’s son, Yahir, in Chicago on November 2. 18, 2022. They are from Venezuela. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

Silvia Gaby Calderon sits with her husband as their daughter yawns while waiting to be seen by a doctor at the Cook County Health Clinic in Chicago, Nov. 15, 2019. 18, 2022. They are from Peru. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

After working as a registered nurse for six years, Guerrero decided to earn an MD from the University of Michigan Medical School, followed by an emergency medicine residency at Kings County Hospital/SUNY Downstate in New York and completed a year-long fellowship in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

She credits the sacrifice of parents, friends, teachers and neighbors. “I was able to realize dreams that I never imagined. So I see these kids, I see so much potential in their young lives,” she said.

So when 2-year-old Yansa Torres tried to play with her stethoscope, she let him. Yansa arrived with her 11-month-old brother and their mother, Darling Vielma, from Venezuela just over a month ago.

During the trip north, the mother didn’t have enough money to buy food for her children, so when they arrived in Chicago, both children were malnourished and sick, Vielma said.

“I was afraid that instead of bringing them safety, I would hurt them,” Vielma said in Spanish. Like thousands of Venezuelans, Vielma said she left her country in search of stable employment to provide a better education for her children.

When she arrived in Chicago and was taken to the clinic, she was grateful. It was a blessing. I didn’t expect it,” she said.

Her two children are now at a healthy weight and visit regularly for follow-up.

Stroger executives and staff established the clinic a day after city and state officials asked for their help in providing medical care to migrants arriving in Chicago on buses sent by the Texas government. Greg Abbott, said Iliana Mora, who oversees the program that also provides preventive and follow-up care to migrants throughout Chicago and those who have been temporarily placed in suburban shelters and hotels.

Since its inception, there have been more than 9,000 visits to the clinic, reflecting the number of buses that have arrived at Union Station in Chicago since the summer. More than 3,500 people are now patients of the clinic, including nearly 1,000 children and 35 pregnant women.

In addition to providing the medical examinations required as part of their asylum application with immigration authorities, immigrants can also obtain medication, treatment for chronic illnesses, eye and hearing tests. and school physical exams for children. On site, there are also mental health resources and staff members who help migrants get health insurance.

“Health is not always in the foreground. It’s often not a priority for immigrants,” said Mora, a daughter of Colombian parents who came to the United States in the 1970s.

Most migrants are only focused on finding a livelihood that would be worth their journey, struggle and pain, she said.

“But health is critically important to their livelihoods and their ability to contribute to the economy and their families,” Mora said.

Mora, who mobilized Stroger staff to create a team to establish services at the clinic, said it was essential to include doctors and other health care leaders who are bilingual and bicultural.

“These people have been through so much; They deserve respect and dignity,” Guerrero said. “At the clinic, you are not only a medical provider, but you also open your culture and your heart to them, because they can relate because they know that you know what it is to be Lantinx.”

For Israel Rocha, chief executive of Cook County Health, the project heals. He said it is gratifying to be able to provide comfort and assistance to newly arrived immigrants in the midst of so much upheaval in their lives.

Rene Munoz, the clinic’s site director, said health care is a human right and supersedes any political rhetoric around migration.

Munoz has seen with her own eyes how the eyes of expectant mothers and mothers light up when they walk into the clinic knowing that there are doctors who will help them.

For many migrants, access to healthcare – or at least adequate access – was not available in their country of origin.

Silvia Gaby Calderon is 33 weeks pregnant. She left Peru with her husband and their one-year-old daughter. The rewards of making this trip outweighed the risk of staying in Peru, where they lost their jobs and had almost no food.

“We did it for our kids,” Calderon said in Spanish.

Guerrero met with her to prepare her for work in a few weeks.

“Having (doctors) was a blessing,” Calderon said.

Like Guerrero, Muñoz becomes emotional when he sees families with young children. It reminds him of his own children and makes him nostalgic for his own immigration story.

He said his parents left their hometown of Jalisco, Mexico, and crossed the border without permission, holding him in their arms. He was 2 years old. They were undocumented until her father was granted permanent residency through an amnesty program in 1986.

His family, he says, did it on their own. So working with migrants now is important to him.

“To kind of let them know that we’re here to help them, that they’re not doing it alone like we did 35 years ago,” he said. And that there are people who know their struggles and know their stories. And who look like them, who speak their language.

larodriguez@chicagotribune.com