A total of 9,837 Filipinos took the United States licensure examination for nurses for the first time from January to June 2008, indicating they wanted to seek employment in America, former Senator Ernesto Herrera, general secretary of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, said in a press statement Saturday.
Herrera said the number of Filipino nurses who took the NCLEX and implicitly sought jobs in the US in the first semester was roughly steady -- just 107 shy of the year-ago takers. He said a total of 9,944 Filipino nurses took the examination in the first half of 2007.