Immigration, Inclusion and the U.S. Workforce
As baby-boomers move into retirement forecasts show a likely increase in employment opportunities for people immigrating to the United States. In addition, in recent years a “reverse brain drain” has occurred as highly educated and skilled immigrants return to growing economies in their home countries. Many employers are moving towards a more “immigrant friendly” workplace as they adjust to these shifting demographics and labor trends.
So how can you most effectively work with this population called immigrants? Take some time to get to know the cultural norms of your employees and/or groups of employees. Each culture has norms that govern behavior; what seems respectful to one culture may provoke confusion and mistrust from another. Culturally aware managers will be better able to identify possible sources of misunderstandings and build bridges; thus, helping to create more inclusive environments, optimize team functioning and increase productivity. The following are some things for supervisors, team leaders, and managers to think about when working with recently immigrated employees/co-workers.
Language: Every manager knows success and productivity have a direct link to good communication.
- Determine key points and think through proper sequencing of an explanation prior to communication.
- Simplify communication: emphasize key words, avoid slang and be consistent with terminology.
- Be cautious of information overload.
- Speak clearly. While it may be helpful to slow speech down a little, speaking louder won't help—and can be offensive.
- Put key points in writing and/or utilize visual diagrams where possible.
- Do not assume that nodding or saying “yes” or “okay” indicates understanding; it can mean many things.
- Check for clarity by asking employees to repeat information or demonstrate task.
- Learn a few words of their language—it is a powerful indication that you care and will help build trust .
Cultural Awareness: Here are a few things to be aware of—know your own preferences and watch for those of the employee:
- Non-verbal communication such as eye contact, touch and physical space. For example, a Muslim woman may be uncomfortable with a non-familial male extending his hand in greeting. If the person's nonverbal behaviors don't match yours, ask about them rather than assuming they mean the same thing they would mean if you did them.
- Gender roles and norms around responsibilities, wage earning, and contact with the opposite sex. For example, a Haitian physician may not think twice about asking a female colleague to get him a cup of coffee. Again, ask about expectations rather than assuming someone is being disrespectful.
- Views on authority. A recently immigrated Hmong employee may feel questioning or correcting a supervisor is a sign of disrespect, and possibly provoke retribution. If you are not receiving feedback or being asked questions from a new employee, don't assume that they don't care.
- Different concepts of time. If your employee's culture is present oriented, you may need to tell them what “being on time” means in the US, and how important it is to job success.
Practices for the workplace: Changes and new learning situations can be challenging, unsettling and tiring for everyone. Be patient with yourself and others. While there is some adjustment for everyone, remember that the immigrated employee/co-worker is experiencing much larger cultural adjustments than you are.
- Incorporate “immigrant friendly” options to your company's benefits packages such as longer vacation time and airfare discounts so immigrant employees can visit family. Homesickness is a leading cause for immigrants return to their home countries.
- Create a mentoring system to help employees new to the US culture to learn the organizational culture and succeed.
- Orient employees to practices and norms of your organization.
- Offer or connect ESL employees to language classesm.
- Keep record of the languages all employees speak and tap into this resource when coming into contact with non-English speaking customers.
When experiencing a behavior that challenges your own cultural norms: remember to slow down, check your assumptions, and assume positive intent before acting. For more tips and tools or for further information on successful ways to improve your team functioning by valuing all your employees contact our office. For more information about our cultural diversity training and services visit here.
Calendar of Events
Upcoming events:
September 6, 2007 A Soul has No Gender: A Mother's Journey will be held from 6:00-9:00 PM at the Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center in Seattle, WA. For more information contact our office at (206) 224-9293. See New at EDS for more details.
Celebrations & Recognition:September--Hispanic Heritage Month. Initiated in 1968, September was chosen due to the September 15 th Independence Day celebrations of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In addition Mexico achieved independence on September 16th, and Chile on September 18th.
September 22--Yom Kippur (Jewish) – The day of Atonement is the holiest and most solemn of all days in the Jewish year. They believe that once you atone for your mistakes, you can be “at one” with God. Observation of this day includes ceasing to work and fasting; in 2007 Yom Kippur begins at sunset on Sept 21 ends at sunset on September 22.
September 13--Ramadan begins (Islam) The holiest period in the Islamic year begins at the sighting of the new moon. It is observed by fasting between the hours of sunrise and sunset during the entire month, reading the Qu'ran and worshiping.
October--Disability Awareness Month began with presidential proclamation in 1988 and offers an opportunity to spread awareness and promote advancement on issues differently-abled people face.
October 11-- National Coming Out Day: is an international event provides awareness and visibility for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-gendered community. The first day was observed in 1988.
October 24--Ramadan ends
New at EDS
Executive Diversity Services and the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation have launched our first effort to develop an online training and assessment program. This product will assess knowledge of managers and supervisors regarding Cultural Competency Skills and test their ability to apply information and tools to case studies and video scenarios. This effort will allow EDS to develop content that can be used for other e learning for clients who want that option.
A Soul Has No Gender: A Mother's Journey. In September EDS will sponsor our first ever speaker on diversity and inclusion issues: A Soul Has No Gender is the story of one woman's experience as a mother of fraternal twins who are both sexual minorities. One twin is lesbian and the other is female-to-male transgender. Based on her doctoral work the presenter shares the process she went through in coming to accept their sexual and gender identities and how this process has transformed her view of gender and sex and her relationship with her children, her family, herself and others.
It is the presenter's hope that sharing her experience in coming to accept her children's sexual and gender identities will help generate awareness about the significant challenges these young people face and will serve to challenge other parents, educators, as well as the agencies and service providers who come in contact with these youth to respond more empathically. (see calendar for details)
People: Immigrants to the U.S.
Isabel Allende Llona, (August, 1942), is a Chilean novelist. Allende, who writes in the "magic realism" tradition, is considered one of the first successful women novelists in Latin America
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. (July, 1926 – August, 2004) was a Swiss-born psychiatrist and the author of the groundbreaking book On Death and Dying, where she first discussed what is now known as the Kübler-Ross model.
Dr. Andrew Stephen Grove (September, 1936) is a Hungarian-American businessman. He participated in the founding of Intel and was key to the company's success.
Eliezer Wiesel , KBE (commonly known as Elie Wiesel, September, 1928) is a Romania-born American-Jewish novelist, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of over 40 books, the best known of which is Night, a memoir that describes his experiences during the Holocaust and his imprisonment in several concentration camps.
César Pelli (October, 1926) is a noted Argentine architect known for designing some of the world's tallest buildings and other major urban landmarks. His firm has its headquarters and employs about 100 architects in New Haven, Connecticut. He is known for his extensive use of curved facades and metallic elements in his designs.
Bette Bao Lord (November, 1938) is a writer and civic activist. She was born in Shanghai and came to the United States at the age of eight when her father, a British-trained engineer, was sent here in 1946 by the Chinese government to purchase equipment. Today, Ms. Bao Lord is a distinguished novelist and writer, and serves as chair of the Board of Trustees of Freedom House. Established by Wendell Wilkie and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1941, Freedom House is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting democracy around the world.
Samuel "Sammy" Sosa Peralta (November, 1968, Dominican Republic) is a designated hitter for the Texas Rangers of the American League. His Major League career began when he broke in with the Texas Rangers in 1989. In the intervening years, he has played for the Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs and Baltimore Orioles. He ended the 2005 season with 588 career home runs, placing him fifth on the all-time home run list.
Data Dump (Did You Know?)
Immigrant families make up a large share of the U.S. population.
- According to the 2000 Census, there are over 30 million immigrants in the U.S., representing 11 percent of the total population
- One in five children in the U.S. is the native- or foreign-born child of an immigrant.
- Immigrants are settling in communities throughout the U.S. During the 1990s, the immigrant population in “new immigrant” states grew twice as fast (61 percent versus 31 percent) as the immigrant population in the six states that receive the greatest numbers of immigrants.
- Immigrants and citizens live together in families: 85 percent of immigrant families with children are mixed status families (families in which at least one parent is a non–U.S. citizen and one child is a U.S. citizen).
- Between 1970 and 2000, the naturalized citizen population increased by 71 percent.
Immigrants contribute significantly to the U.S. economy.
- According to the National Academy of Sciences, the total net benefit to the Social Security system if immigration levels remain constant will be nearly $500 billion for the 1998–2022 period, and nearly $2 trillion through 2072.
- In New York, also in 1997, $13.3 billion (69 percent) of the $19.3 billion in taxes paid by immigrants went to the federal government in the form of income taxes, Social Security taxes, and unemployment insurance.
- In 2000, the foreign-born population accounted for nearly 15 percent of the total civilian labor force.
- In 2000 foreign-born men 16 years old and older had a higher labor force participation rate (80 percent) than native-born men (74 percent).
http://www.nilc.org/immspbs/research/pbimmfacts_0704.pdf
Kudos for Best Practices for Diversity
This edition's Kudos goes to USG for establishing Inclusive Competency Models for their Senior Managers, Managers and Professional level staff. These models will be used to establish goals and measurements for inclusiveness on annual performance reviews. The Diversity team at USG, namely Helen Wolfe and Chris Rosenthal have worked diligently for the past several years implementing USG's Diversity and Inclusion Initiative and their efforts are paying off. This latest effort is testimony to their commitment to inclusion at all levels of the organization. Our hats off to them and keep up the good work!
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In their own words...
“We bring valuable skills and a seasoned, diverse point of view which helps to give companies a competitive edge in an increasingly multinational marketplace." Hafiz Adamjee, Senior Controller for Novartis' global research operations on immigrant workers
“With the current unavailability of visas, a legal resident alien can expect to wait anywhere from five to eight years to bring his spouse and minor children to the U.S. from Mexico. A U.S. citizen can expect to wait at least a year before they can get their spouse to the U.S. just because the internal processing is so delayed. Nobody I have ever talked to thinks this is reasonable—because it's not.” Immigration Rights Attorney, Idaho
“Most of the people who come in have no English, but in no time, they are picking up the language.”
G. Lowaczyk, Polish Immigrant, Hospitality Manager
“The American dream for me is leave many things which you have in your country. Maybe a good life. American dream is leave many things, many friends, many good times, is work a lot, is feel many times frustrated. That is for me the American dream.” LUISA CARDENAS, Chile
“I think we sometimes work harder than the Americans because we have to jump many barriers. The barrier of language, the barrier of culture. We didn't, for example, never before knew about taxes or credit card, or nothing like that. We have to learn. When you are a boy, you have five years to learn the basic language. When you are immigrant, you don't have any years.” PILAR LANDA, Cuba
“March 30th. We landed at O'Hare. It was already 5:00 at night, getting dark and all my husband's relatives were inside the building, and Boris, also. Oh, my goodness. It was hugness! I was almost dead. I thought that I was dreaming. Hugness, laughness, tears, smileness. They touched me and they touched my family like we were not here, just the shape of us is here. Boris said, 'You're here, you're here!' 200 percent we knew it was for good.” ELENA RASKIN, Belarus
Reel Reviews
Man Push Cart: (Ramin Bharani, US/Iran, 83 min, 2005, English & Urdu), The heralded film that follows Ahmad as he struggles to drag his heavy cart along the streets of New York to his corner in Midtown Manhattan where, every morning, he sells coffee and donuts. Ahmad (Ahmad Ravsi), a former Pakistani pop star, works as one of the city's many pushcart vendors. The endless rhythm of Ahmad's days - take the train from his tiny Brooklyn apartment to Manhattan, pick up his cart, pull it - through dangerous New York City traffic - to his corner, then spend the day selling coffee and bagels to hurried New Yorkers, having only the most miniscule shreds of actual human interaction with the occasional friendly regular, then haul the cart back, only to start all over again the next day. Bahrani shows us Ahmad struggling with his cart again and again, establishing a rhythm for the film that mirrors the monotonous parade of days that is Ahmad's life.
Golden Door: a modern fable from director, Emanuele Crialese, captures the spirit of the immigrant experience as one family sheds the comfort of the Old World for the opportunities of the New – a risk that carries no guarantee of success. In a desolate corner of the Sicilian countryside lives a family of peasants who have worked the same land for generations, at one with nature, surrounded by the spirits of the dead. The hard changeless monotony of daily life is interrupted by tales of the New World where money falls from trees and carrots are ten feet long. Salvatore makes the momentous decision to sell all he has – his land, his home, his livestock – and take his children and aged mother to a better life across the ocean. To become citizens of the New World, they must die a little and be reborn, leaving behind the antiquated customs and superstitions of their homeland. They must be strong in body and healthy in mind, learn to obey and swear loyalty if they wish to pass through the Golden Door.
An Immigrant Class: documents the human experience of immigration through 20 first-person stories and photographs of recent immigrants to Chicago from around the world. Each reveals the unique elements of his/her life before immigration, the circumstances that motivated the move, the experience of immigrating, and the impressions of life and identity that continue to unfold and change in the United States. An Immigrant Class is an attempt to break through the various stereotypes of immigrants to introduce the humanity behind the myth; and to share the hopes, fears, tragedies and triumphs that make up the complexity of the immigrant experience. It is an exercise in listening and understanding. Read on...
Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882 (2004) by Roger Daniels. Farm laborers from Mexico, computer programmers from Taiwan, political refugees from Vietnam--recent immigrants to the U.S. perpetuate a national tradition stretching back to America's colonial beginnings. But in this carefully researched study, historian Daniels traces an erratic fever chart of changing attitudes among the American lawmakers who have set the conditions for legal entry into the country. Beginning his chronicle with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Daniels probes the convoluted politics behind immigration law, exposing the unexpected emergence of new immigration opportunities from policymaking suffused with racist logic and deceitful rhetoric. Daniels identifies, for instance, the often-overlooked liberalizing provisions of a cold war immigration reform that struck ethnic discrimination from immigration law at a time when American-born blacks were still struggling to achieve their full rights. Similarly, Daniels shows how a 1965 immigration law that its architects supposed would favor Europeans actually opened doors for Asians and Latinos. As Americans continue to debate immigration in a world divided by international terrorism, few books offer a fuller context for the key issues.(B. Christensen; American Library Association)
The Chosen Shore: Stories of Immigrants by Ellen Alexander Conley. A Korean street child is adopted into an upper-middle-class suburban home. A Vietnamese monk dishes up fast food to fund a spiritual center. A woman saves for a home back in Ghana, where she will never live. All are immigrants to the United States, known to most of their fellow Americans only as statistics. The stories that statistics can't tell unfold in this book, in which twenty-three recent immigrants recall navigating the paradoxes, pitfalls, and triumphs of becoming Americans. Candid, evocative, and richly detailed, their oral histories comprise a compelling portrait of the changing face of the American population. In venues from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times, Ellen Alexander Conley's fiction has been hailed as "wonderful," "impassioned," and "memorable." Conley brings the same passion and skill to her depiction of our nation's most recent arrivals. These personal histories, along with Conley's thoughtful overview of literature on immigration, give us a firsthand sense of what it means to become an American.
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