Article was made for Writing for the Media class at Raritan Valley Community College. October 2018Immigration; it has always been a controversial subject at any decade of U.S history. With the increase of negative media attention, it has been assumed many of undocumented and documented immigrants have no source of education, or skill for a higher paying workforce. It can be forgotten there are immigrants over the age of 18 that enter the U.S are not ignorant, but a decent amount have not only an equivalence of high school, but also college degrees. Although, a fair amount of immigrants have entered with skills or degrees, most suffer the dilemma of either not having the right documents, degrees/skills not being valid, or lack of communication skills. Instead of the negative part of American society complaining about immigrants not being able to get jobs, it should be easier for the ones who already have experiences in certain career fields to get specific jobs in that career field.
According to Association of American College and Universities (AAC&U), an article was written about Immigrants within Higher education stating, “Almost a third of foreign-born individuals living in the United States have a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the MSP—a rate comparable to that of native-born Americans.” Also, the official Census Bureau in 2015 for Educational Attainment in United States even claimed that there may be more people in the U.S who completed an equivalence of high school diploma, but a Bachelor's degree for both American born citizens and Foreign-born citizens is the same equivalence (one-third, as said before). Although, if there are any documentation issues, that is when all the problems start arising. To a more personal story, I wanted to mention about my father who came here in 1991 from Germany, and without any college degree was able to get the Temporary Workers Visa (Form I-129). According to my Father, in Germany, skills and apprenticeships for careers like engineering are well known to countries like the U.S and highly influence people like my him to come to the U.S. Another thing to add, he was already working at an international company called Bihler since he started his apprenticeship. Already having a job, getting the worker’s visa was less difficult, because all he was doing is transferring. He claimed the process already in the 1990s was extremely difficult, and also learning the language, couldn’t have his own place, and even faced discrimination because of the tension post-World War II, plus the collapse of East Germany. The only way he became successful in the U.S was not exactly working hard, but marrying an American a few years after so he could get his permanent residency (Green Card) which helped in live easier in the U.S. I believe my father was fortunate compared to other immigration stories I have heard. I was interrogating some acquaintances of mine who are first/second generation Americans, and two of these acquaintances fathers (one from Colombia, and the second from Turkey), claimed both father's had an engineering degree from their past-living countries and the U.S educational services did not validate their engineering credentials. If immigrants do not come with a Work Visa but finish the process of the Green Card, they may be able to work, but now face the issue if continuing their career-type jobs they had in the country the were living in. When that issue occurs, World Education Services (WES) is suppose to help with those credentials, as those needed to soon work in the U.S. With those services, you would assume everything would be resolved, and now you can live comfortably and support your family, although that is not always the case. In the website itself, every country has different requirements on what degree achieved, coming back to my story, a country like Germany who had presently been associated to the U.S government will not have as many issues with the process with any forms of education, including higher education. In countries such as Turkey or Colombia that do not have much association between the U.S government will most likely have to fulfill more requirements, and will receive more issues. As I was checking out reviews for WES, there were many bad reviews stating things such as, "spending a lot of money on the program" or the documents or verification for the college credentials for the degrees were causing conflicts. It these document errors take months for get correct, this comes back to the issue. I understand how there are different verification for each degree within different countries, but why make it complicated enough to have people having issues for years? If they went to college for at least four years, they are probably not ignorant when it comes to the field they studied (If you want to check out more information, go to U.S Department of Education) ) In any country, communication skills are a great value to conform in anything throughout a society, including jobs. In countries such as Germany, becoming an citizen or to declare residency you are required to take classes on German language, culture, and other communication skills. These classes are required and are charged as low as 1.95 euros per class. If Americans required these classes for all every immigrant wanted to become a resident, there would be a higher success rate when it comes to immigrants having a chance to work regardless of having a degree or not. The U.S has been built up of immigrants for hundreds of years, encouraging people to enter because they had a chance to have the pursuit of happiness, having their form of the American dream. Either these immigrants lived in the toxic meat factories of New York, or a certain group suffers a form of discrimination. In modern-day America, society wants to find a way to improve life for people who suffer mental health issues such as depression, how do you believe these immigrants feel when they are told they don’t belong here. Then becoming residents, they cannot support their families because they have a degree but got stuck working at McDonald’s because it became difficult to accept college credentials? As always, the people who hard will always pay the consequences.
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