NPR: "How One US Group Turns Migrants Into Employees"

When Almothana Alhamoud, a thirty-one-year-old Syrian data analyst, arrived in Chicago two years ago after fleeing the Syrian war, he took the first job offered him: a nightshift cashier at a convenience store. "When I came over here I just want to find anything to survive," he tells NPR over dinner with his family, who followed him to Chicago and are now applying for asylum. "It was cold and it was the worst winter I ever seen in my life. I was struggling there.”

Although Alhamoud holds a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and had a career as a data analyst for Syria's Agriculture Ministry, he discovered his degree was not recognized in the US. At job interviews in Chicago he struggled with his English.

It’s common for many refugees and immigrants to the US to face difficulties in their professional life as they adjust, and many take low-paying and low-skill jobs that are not commensurate with their education and experience. According to a new report from the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, nearly 1.5 million college-educated immigrants were employed in low-skill jobs between 2009 and 2013. Commonly referred to as “brain waste,” Michael Fix, the Migration Policy Institute’s president, tells NPR that these workers in low skill jobs represent a tremendous loss to the US economy. In terms of income, these workers "lost 40 billion dollars a year, or about the same amount as the entire profit of the airline industry." He adds that the increase in their income would translate into almost $10.2 billion more in federal, state, and local taxes.

One organization looking to solve this problem is Upwardly Global, a nonprofit with headquarters in New York that helps immigrants and refugees rebuild their careers in the US. Over the past ten years, this organization has successfully placed 3,700 applicants in their first professional positions, says executive director Nicole Cicerani, with jobs that pay approximately $45,000 to $50,000 per year. "In all of our employer partnerships, nobody has agreed to hire our candidate. They agree to interview them and they hire them because they wind up being the best candidate for the job," says Cicerani. "That's really something when you think about it—the top candidate was somebody who was working as a hot dog vendor six months prior." 

Cities are starting to take notice. St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Pittsburgh are either looking into or starting job initiatives aimed at refugees and immigrants. The Mosaic Project in St. Louis encourages business leaders to hire more international talent, fosters immigrant entrepreneurs, and connects refugees and migrants with professionals for career advancement. Cicerani says that while it is normal in the immigrant experience to "come to this country and sacrifice everything for the next generation," including education and professional advancement, her organization is showing it doesn’t have to be that way. "This is a postindustrial, skills-based economy and the idea is that we want people to do the jobs that we actually need in our economy."

Alhamoud signed up for job workshops at Upwardly Global's Chicago office. He was assigned a mentor, who helped him revise his resume and practice his interviewing skills. After seven months of workshops, Alhamoud found a job with Cox and Kings Global Service working as an IT help desk support technician for a company that processes visas for the Indian consulate in Chicago. "To learn to sell yourself, that's the hard part, it's the work culture thing here," he says. Now, he plans to spend his nights as a student and seek an advanced American degree.

TIME: “US and Australia Might Be Close to a Deal on Refugee Swap”

The United States and Australia are arranging a deal to “swap” refugees from each country’s extraterritorial refugee centers. Australia has approximately 1,800 asylum seekers in camps on the islands of Nauru and Papua New Guinea, many of whom have fled conflict or extreme economic poverty from countries including Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan. Critics have labeled these camps Australia’s “Guantanamo Bay,” and alleged that refugees have been mistreated in the camps. Australia announced at President Barack Obama’s global migration summit that it would exchange their own migrants for those in US-backed detention camps in Costa Rica.

The resettlement process will be administered with the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, and US authorities will conduct their own assessment and review of refugees along with security checks. The need to resettle these refugees has become a priority for the Australian government because of Papua New Guinea’s order to close the Australian-run detention center and ruling stating that the refugees were held there illegally. Australia has a strict policy to never settle asylum seekers who arrive by sea, in order to deter human smugglers bringing over refugees to Australia by boat, typically from Indonesian ports. The refugee exchange with the US will be a way around this law, and will allow the government to deal with the refugees at these detention centers and potentially close them.   

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says that the responsibility to “stop the boats” has fallen to his government, and that this refugee swap wouldn’t be repeated or extended to asylum seekers not already in camps, although the Australian government has previously arranged with other foreign governments to accept asylum seekers. “Our priority is the resettlement of women, children and families. This will be an orderly process [and] it will not be rushed,” Turnbull says in the Wall Street Journal. 

UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants Francois Crepeau, who says that refugees at the detention centers on Nauru have experienced cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment, welcomes the refugee exchange with the US.  “We don’t know how it’s going to develop, but I certainly hope that it develops in a way that offers refugees and asylum seekers solutions, and if it succeeds at emptying Manus and Nauru, I think this will be a great achievement,” Crepeau tells reporters in Canberra, Australia.

The refugee agreement could potentially be opposed by President-elect Donald Trump, who during his campaign called for tighter immigration controls and spoke of banning Muslims from immigrating to the US. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies, predicts a "firestorm" of opposition from anti-immigration activists regarding the refugee exchange. "It's so difficult to justify," he tells Fairfax Media. "I don't expect any Republicans will defend it. I can't see a lot of Democrats defending it either. My sense is that when the word gets out on this, it'll be dead on arrival." Other governmental figures are more optimistic the deal will go through. Senior Australian government minister Christopher Pyne believes the deal can be finalized during Obama’s term. "There certainly is time—two and a half months is plenty of time—and if that's the case, it will be a great achievement for the Turnbull government," Pyne tells Nine Network television.

Regarding the pending deal, Amnesty International says in a statement that it is concerned about the lack of information provided by the Australian government around the timeline of the deal as the exact numbers of people who will be given the opportunity to settle in the US.