Refugees strive for work in U.S.

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Wilhelmina Holder said she still has trouble finding her place in the U.S. work force since fleeing Liberia in 1985, five years after her father, who also was the president, was assassinated.

Now working as a public health physician and executive director of the Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment in St. Paul, Minn., Holder said there still are institutional biases about whether immigrants and refugees in the U.S. should be provided quality job opportunities.

“Here, it was very difficult getting a job in the health system,” she said. “I’ve never been able to get a leadership position in the department of health where I should be with my leadership capabilities and my background as a public health physician.”

Holder was present Monday at the first National Conference on Refugee Professional Recertification, a two-day event co-hosted by MSU and Baltimore-based RefugeeWorks, a nonprofit project that consults with refugees and various refugee-help organizations, said Linda Rabben, a staff consultant for RefugeeWorks and the event’s organizer.

“Many of the refugees that come here are very seriously traumatized,” she said. “They’ve seen horrible things and it’s very difficult for them to get the help that they need to integrate into American society.”

Retraining and recertifying refugees who once held professional positions in their country of origin for domestic employment is beneficial because, in the long run, they will be able to diversify and make important contributions to the U.S. job market, she said.

“These very highly trained and experienced professionals have a lot to contribute to U.S. society,” she said. “They’re eager to work and (they) face all these obstacles that keep them from working in their field.”

Rosina Hassoun, an MSU assistant professor of anthropology who was scheduled to speak today at the conference, said she was concerned for the future of refugee employment in the U.S. because of several factors, including discrimination and the economic recession.

“What we have is a downturn in the economy,” she said. “What we have is large numbers of people who are searching for jobs. It’s very easy to scapegoat and to also discriminate against our refugees.”

Hassoun, whose family came to the U.S. as refugees from Pakistan, said this can be offset by raising awareness of the plight being experienced by refugees. MSU is a prime place for this, she said, because of the university’s history of outreach.

“I think we sit at an interesting place,” she said. “Being a land grant university (and) having a history of reaching out to communities, I think that it is very crucial that (MSU) hosts this at this time.”

The conference attracted participants from across the U.S. and world. May Al-Khafaji, who works as a refugee specialist for the Lutheran Social Services of Michigan, or LSS, a nonprofit organization, said she’s able to share her personal experiences with other refugees.

Originally from Iraq, she fled to Jordan in March 2006, launching a two-year journey of uncertainty. After living in Jordan for a year, she applied in 2007 for refugee status with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which granted her request in November 2007. Almost five months later, she arrived in the U.S. and was resettled with the help of LSS.

“My job now is to help refugees and guide them and try to ease the obstacles that any one of them can feel or can have, especially with my knowledge from my own personal experiences, what I’ve been through, and how I was able to overcome them,” she said.

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