alt Hacker NewsHealthcare workers for the elderly don't need giant stacks of cash, they just need fair wages they can live on. There is no shortage of extremely compassionate people who don't need to be bribed to care for others in need. They do need to be able to support themselves and thrive though. It makes zero difference if they are foreigners, or unrelated.
Traditionally, communities cared for each other, no matter if someone was their family member or not. The elderly, injured, sick, disabled, and orphaned have been cared for by those outside of their immediate families throughout all of human history. Our modern lives have made us unusually isolated, but it's still our nature to care for each other.
All that you have written is true. In fact, it is so true that a brief survey of church history bears it out. The caregivers in times past: those who founded universities, infirmaries, hospitals, and clinics, were members of religious orders. Often consecrated female religious sisters. And they never required giant stacks of cash, because they were already under vows. Of course, their room and board, and all expenses were always covered by their religious institute. In fact, consecrated religious are members of a true family, and held together by true bonds of love. It is simply an adoptive family to which they belong.
Therefore, these faithful women and men have cared for strangers and foreigners because of cultural norms, because of religious obligation (for which they freely volunteered) and from a selfless faith in God's love and salvation. It is this Gospel which they sought to spread by means of good works and prayer.
So basically, today those extremely compassionate and loyal people are being recruited as mercenaries. Not to renounce the world, not to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but simply to snag their certifications, bona fides and licenses for a paycheck. Ultimately, they are recapitulating the process by which religious orders formed up and were sent on mission.
Sadly, this mercenary, paycheck-to-paycheck model is not as cohesive or attractive as the religious life was in times past. You can have extremely compassionate people who are utterly burned out, and you can also have mercenaries who are not compassionate at all but just in it for the bucks, and they exhibit open contempt for their charges. And yet, these women and men still need to fend for themselves at home, and cover their own expenses, and feed themselves under a bare lightbulb at a kitchen table with 3 empty chairs. This is the true source of the "housing crisis", by the way, that women and men move out at 18, and they are all living alone and separately, and occupying small spaces, constantly at risk of eviction or displacement.
The women swallowed hook, line and sinker a story of girlboss domination, and smashing the patriarchy along with the glass ceiling, but ultimately they wind up as wage slaves, childless and free of any marital entanglements, and their employer has no more obligation to them beyond a 2-weeks notice, severance pay, and COBRA.