Vietnam in talks to send engineers, nurses to US
HANOI - Vietnamese officials are negotiating with two U.S. companies to export more than 100 workers to America for
the first time, an official said Monday.
Uni Enterprise International Inc. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Miami Overseas Services in Miami, Florida, have both
offered to recruit people as computer engineers, nurses, salespeople and sailors, said Le Quoc Khanh of Vietnam's Transport
Investment Cooperation Import-Export Corp.
Trancimexco, a state-owned company under the Ministry of Transport, is one of 159 companies licensed to send workers
overseas. Khanh said he will go to the U.S. later this month for further discussions with the two companies.
"The U.S. is a huge market we cannot afford to miss," he said.
However, Khanh said he is worried about the high brokerage fees being charged by the two American companies.
The U.S. companies are asking fees of $12,500 for computer engineers, saying they can earn about $40,000 a year. They are
also charging $8,000 for nurses and salespeople, who can earn salaries averaging $20,000 a year, Khanh said.
Although it has not sent laborers to the U.S. mainland, Vietnam currently has workers in U.S. territories in the South Pacific.
More than 200 workers are in American Samoa, 200 in American Palau and about 35 in Saipan.
Last year, Vietnam sent nearly 32,000 workers overseas, generating $1.25 billion, making labor one of Vietnam's key export
items, said Truong Quang Oanh, director of the Center for Labor Export Information and Consultation Center.
The country has plans to increase that to 50,000 this year, he said. However, the figure cannot compare with Vietnam's heyday
in the 1980s, when 300,000 workers were sent to work in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, he said.
Associated Press - January 15, 2001.
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