Introduction to Skilled Immigrant Workforce Issues: Workforce
Innovation Forum Blog, Week of April 16, 2012
DAY ONE
For the Benefit of All:
Integrating Skilled Immigrants to the U.S. Professional Workforce
An Employer Need
Running a precision-manufacturing business means hiring workers who can operate
expensive, delicate equipment. For one Philadelphia employer, the problem wasn’t a lack of
job applicants. Rather, it was a lack of qualified candidates who had the skills necessary to
safeguard the company’s high-tech machinery.
At the same time, a newcomer named Markos* was struggling to find his place in
Philadelphia’s labor market. An electrical engineer from Albania, he and his wife had arrived in
the U.S. with high hopes. But to date, their employment opportunities had been limited to lowlevel, cash-paying jobs.
Making the match between this skilled worker and the employer who needed him should
have been easy. But it almost didn’t happen at all. In the end, it took Yana, a disarmingly
friendly, persistent Ukrainian former refugee with a talent for spotting employer needs.
Connecting to Work
Yana is an employment specialist at a nonprofit workforce development provider. She took
Markos through a rigorous preparation process that included:
 Stripping his resume of irrelevant or confusing information
 Framing his accomplishments in American terms
 Reviewing U.S.-style interviewing techniques (“Tell me about
yourself”)
 Explaining American expectations for dress, behavior, and
even eye contact
She also reviewed basic measurement – since Markos had been
trained under the metric system, and might have been surprised to
encounter a screening test with inches and ounces.
With Yana as his guide, Markos made the leap. His successful
interview led to an initial job as an electronic technician, and eventually a promotion.
The Bigger Picture
Markos’s situation is not unique, but unfortunately the ending to his story is all too rare. Across
the United States, skilled immigrants who are qualified and work-authorized may nevertheless
struggle to obtain employment commensurate with their ability. Many end up trapped in lowlevel jobs that do not draw on their full talents.
These muted outcomes have high costs for immigrants and their families, as well as our wider
society.
In contrast, when skilled immigrants find equally skilled employment, the benefits are broad:
Increased earnings, improved economic integration, and even increased tax revenue for local
communities. Employers have access to a deeper pool of talent, and children flourish as their
parents succeed.
At IMPRINT, an umbrella organization of nonprofits working with skilled immigrants,
we’re actively at work to solve this puzzle.
This week, we’ll be guest-blogging to highlight the challenges and rewards in serving the
remarkable men and women who have become “Americans by choice.”
We’d love for you to join the discussion! To start off, please let us know: Do you have a
“Markos” story you’d like to share? (Please change names and identifying details to protect
jobseeker privacy, of course.)
*Name changed for privacy.
DAY TWO
Connecting Skilled Immigrants to Employment:
What Workforce Development Professionals Can Do
Highly Skilled… and Underemployed
Each year, more than 1.1 million authorized immigrants arrive in the U.S. While a few have
employment-based visas that connect them immediately to work, the majority must find work
by themselves. As a result, skilled workers can struggle to navigate the American labor market,
and end up languishing in low-skilled jobs despite having the skills employers need.
Workforce development professionals can help. As IMPRINT’s Talent is Ready report details,
there are a variety of promising practices to help skilled immigrants overcome the barriers they
face and find family-sustaining employment.
In this post, we’ll discuss some of those barriers, and potential tools to overcome them. We
welcome your thoughts and suggestions!
Understanding the Barriers
Both direct-service workers at one-stop centers and their program administrators may
encounter skilled immigrant jobseekers as clients or constituents. Having an understanding of
the barriers they face is helpful in determining what program or services may be appropriate.
Common barriers include:









Need for immediate “survival job”
income to support family
Lack of career information and
guidance
Limited English proficiency
Lack of professional networks
Lack of culturally appropriate U.S.
job search skills
Technical skill gaps
Difficulty navigating U.S.
professional licensing processes
Lack of U.S. work experience
Challenges in describing non-U.S.
work experience in terms familiar to American employers
Smart Interventions, Proven Results
These barriers can be addressed successfully with smart interventions. The proven result?
Fewer doctors driving cabs or engineers serving coffee.
The Talent is Ready report details a range of potential interventions, two of which are outlined
below, Both focus on the skill-building that immigrant jobseekers may need to do as they
embark on a U.S. professional job search.
Acquiring technical skills. Some immigrants need gap-bridging coursework to qualify for
U.S. licensure or to update skills for competitiveness in the job search. Service providers can
research the technical skill requirements for a given field and help identify appropriate
programming.
Refining professional job search skills. There are many low cost techniques and activities
to engage skilled immigrants in an appropriate U.S. job search. Note that some of these “soft
skills” vary from traditional workforce development services.
 Open professional networks to immigrant jobseekers by involving corporate volunteers
in networking programming (industry roundtables, mock interviews, speed networking,
etc.)
 Teach jobseekers to provide context for their resumes and cover letters that explain the
value of their foreign education and work experience to U.S. employers
 Help jobseekers understand American differences in the job search process (e.g. body
language, means of self-promotion, hidden intent in interview questions, the role of
networks) and learn to navigate U.S. practices while also validating their cultural
experiences
To learn more about how workforce development professionals can serve immigrant
jobseekers, check out our full Talent is Ready report at:
http://www.imprintproject.org/images/download_files/talent is ready - imprint.pdf.
And please share your thoughts! Does your organization see jobseekers with similar barriers?
What strategies have you found successful in serving them? Are there low-cost interventions
you would recommend?
DAY THREE
Resources for Workforce Professionals on Skilled Immigrants
We’ve enjoyed serving as a guest blogger this week! We hope you’ll check out IMPRINT’s own
resources as well as those of our member organizations and others who are pioneering this
emergent realm of workforce development services.
Do you have an organization, a report, or a promising practice to recommend? Please share
your own resources in comments below.
Organizations:
IMPRINT (www.imprintproject.org) – an umbrella organization of five leading
practitioners in skilled immigrant integration, IMPRINT offers technical
assistance including professional development trainings, publications, and
advocacy opportunities for those providers and policymakers interested in
connecting marginalized skilled immigrants and employers with hiring needs.
Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education
(www.cccie.org) – a national community of practice increasing the visibility of
innovative educational practices for immigrants
RefugeeWorks (www.refugeeworks.org) -- a national refugee employment
network and clearinghouse that shares strategies and promotes promising
practices for refugee economic self-suffiency. RefugeeWorks also provides
technical assistance and training to states, nonprofit agencies, workforce
investment boards and others working to support refugee employment.
Upwardly Global (www.upwardlyglobal.org) – a social entrepreneurial
nonprofit with offices in San Francisco, New York and Chicago, Upwardly
Global trains skilled immigrants in the U.S. professional job search, builds
employer networks, and researches and advocates to remove barriers to
their workforce integration.
World Education Services (www.wes.org) – a credential evaluator with a
mission to foster the integration of persons educated outside the U.S. into
academic and professional settings, WES provides over 50,000 individuals
with credential evaluation reports and also offers a Global Talent Bridge
program which offers seminars and online resources, policy advocacy and
technical assistance to advance opportunities for skilled immigrants.
Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians (www.welcomingcenter.org) –
a Philadelphia-based economic development organization, the Welcoming
Center provides job training, education and placement services to more than
500 individuals a year. The Welcoming Center website includes Career
Guides for four professions as well as a “How to Succeed in the Workplace”
guide for immigrant professionals in any industry.
Welcome Back Initiative (www.welcomebackinitiative.org) – a bridge
between the pool of internationally-trained health workers living in the U.S.
and those communities in need of their linguistically and culturally competent
health service, the Welcome Back Centers have worked in nine locations
from San Diego CA to Providence RI with over 11,000 immigrant health
professionals providing educational case management and assistance with career pathways.
Publications:
Uneven Progress: The Employment Pathways of Skilled Immigrants in the United States
(http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/BrainWasteOct08.pdf) – Statistics documenting the “brain
waste” of skilled immigrants working non-skilled jobs
Employing Foreign Educated Immigrants
(http://www.workandeconomy.org/images/Employing_Internationally_Educated_Final.pdf) –
Policy recommendations for fully valuing the knowledge of foreign educated immigrants
Talent Is Ready (http://www.imprintproject.org/images/download_files/talent is ready –
imprint.pdf) - Promising Practices for Helping Immigrant Professionals Establish Their
American Careers
Immigrant Professional Integration: Federal Policy Recommendations
(http://www.imprintproject.org/images/download_files/federal recommendations for skilled
immigrants from imprint jan2012.pdf) – Non-legislative actions to improve and expand services
to marginalized skilled immigrants