Ed Dudensing Authors Article Featured in The Hill on the Effect of Losing Legal Immigrant Caregivers in Long-Term Care Facilities
September 16, 2026
Originally published by
The Hill
Dudensing Law founder Ed Dudensing authored an opinion piece in The Hill titled “Loss of Legal Immigrant Caregivers Puts America’s Seniors at Risk.” The piece examines how disruptions to legal immigration pathways are straining the caregiver workforce that long-term care facilities depend on, and what that means for resident safety.
Ed draws a direct line between staffing shortages and the elder abuse and neglect cases his firm sees, noting that many of those cases trace back to facilities that could not maintain a sufficient, stable team of trained caregivers. He cites research from Harvard, MIT, and the University of Rochester showing that roughly one in three home care workers and one in five nursing home workers are immigrants, and that elderly mortality in long-term care facilities measurably declines as a metro area’s immigrant population grows. Additional research from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that immigrants account for about 30 percent of direct long-term care workers overall, and 41 percent of home health aides.
The piece also points to the real-world impact of lapsed legal status, describing an interview in which a senior care leader told PBS that facilities have lost between 16 and 40 workers overnight when protections such as temporary protected status expired.
As Ed wrote, “Every lapsed visa or expired protection is a resident who loses the person who knows their routines, care needs and potential risks best.”
Ed argues that legal immigration pathways for healthcare workers should be treated as core to elder care infrastructure, not a peripheral policy debate, and that lawmakers weighing these pathways are also deciding who is available to answer the call button at 2 a.m. in facilities across the country.
Read the full article here: https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/6081964-immigration-pathways-nursing-staffing/