My wife is a prenatal genetic counselor around the L.A. area. At the clinics she's assigned to, she estimates about 1/3 are illegal immigrants, and among this 1/3, at least 95% are completely paid for by Medi-Cal.
To make things worse, her company is requiring her to take 3-hour night classes in Spanish twice weekly at Berlitz so she'll eventually be able to provide counseling for these people without having to arrange for a translator every time she gets one of them as a patient. This is on top of her normal 50-60 hour work week.
This has really infuriated her, since she herself is an immigrant who worked hard to become fluent in English when she came here 10 years ago. She now makes a point of asking such patients why they don't learn English. She says the response is usually along the lines of "whatever, lady" or "umm, I don't know."
Now, I'm not asking this to run down your wife . . . I'm truly curious.
I'm given to understand that the majority of illegal births are to women who had none or very little prenatal medical care.
If that's true, why would they see a prenatal genetic counselor? Wouldn't a doctor be more important, if you had to see someone?