Niyera Ninette remembers coming to the United States from Tanzania about 15 years ago and getting her first job. That job was at a Steak ‘n Shake restaurant in Moline. “I made milkshakes at the restaurant. I would come home at night and complain that my hands were frozen,” Ms. Ninette said as she recalled […]
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Niyera Ninette remembers coming to the United States from Tanzania about 15 years ago and getting her first job. That job was at a Steak ‘n Shake restaurant in Moline.
“I made milkshakes at the restaurant. I would come home at night and complain that my hands were frozen,” Ms. Ninette said as she recalled her early days in the Quad Cities.
The young woman from Tanzania has left the milkshakes behind. Today, she is an employment specialist with World Relief Quad Cities – a nonprofit agency that provides services to immigrants in western Illinois and eastern Iowa. One of those services is finding jobs for immigrants resettling in the Quad Cities.
“We help them with the challenges of finding work. Getting them used to the work culture here, what to wear and the language,” said Ms. Ninette.
The challenges faced by immigrants was one of the main issues tackled recently during a three-hour seminar called “Immigrant Workforce – QC’s Best Kept Secret.”
The event, held at the Iowa Workforce Development office in Davenport, brought together about 30 people representing the business community, World Relief Quad Cities, Iowa Workforce and others. The goal of the event was to offer insight to employers about how to connect with the refugee and immigrant population in the Quad Cities.
The seminar offered tips for bringing people and employers together. It showed how employers can benefit from hiring immigrants – and how immigrants can be great employees, said Edgar Ramirez, a refugee workforce liaison with the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, who was one of the featured speakers.
“(Immigrants) want to be part of a team, it gives them that sense of belonging. … When you are a father or a mother and you have little eyes looking up at you, you want to provide for them. … They have the same goals as anyone of us,” Mr. Ramirez told the seminar attendees.
He added that immigrants make great employees because of their work ethic, the talents they bring to the job, and the fact that they will often stay employed with a company instead of leaving for other jobs.
“They are very eager to work. … They want to succeed. We want them to succeed,” Denise Kelly, director of human resources at XPAC in Milan, said during the immigration workforce seminar.
XPAC is a full-service logistics provider, offering packaging solutions for service parts, individual components and whole goods. The company has about 1,200 employees. That number includes about 450 immigrants
“They are such good workers. They show up everyday,” said Ms. Kelly, who added that XPAC has been hiring immigrants in the Quad Cities since 2011.
She called immigrants in the region a great “untapped workforce” that could benefit many companies.
Another company leader at the seminar, Kim Jaber, the human resources manager at Berry Global, Inc., also said her company is pleased with the work ethic of its immigrant employees. Berry has about 160 full-time employees, which includes about 25 immigrants.
In fact, many managers at Berry want immigrant workers on their work shifts because of that great work ethic and productivity. Ms. Jaber said in the work world there is often a “shift rivalry” where employees from one shift compare their work with that of another shift. And the company’s second shift – with its immigrant employees – has “started to kick butt,” she added.
However, progress and success stories have come with a price. Immigrants face a variety of challenges to get and keep jobs in the region. Topping that list of challenges includes language barriers, transportation to and from work, cultural differences and overcoming stereotypes and prejudices.
But for each challenge, there are solutions. Some of those solutions discussed at the immigration seminar include:
- Language barriers: Company leaders said having interpreters at work is often needed. XPAC’s Ms. Kelly said employees at her company speak at least 12 different languages.
- Transportation: Berry company leaders helped resolve this issue by starting a transportation service for their employees. Under this service, a number of pick-up and drop-off points are established around the region with the employees being responsible for getting to those pick-up points. The company spends $17,000 a month for this service, Ms. Jaber said. The transportation problem also is being resolved by other people within the immigrant community. The company said that community members often form their own transportation service to make sure newer immigrants get to and from work.
- Immigrants finding work in their field of training: “Immigrants and refugees sometimes had jobs that they are no longer qualified to do because of licensing or education restrictions in the United States. This can be challenging to navigate, and quite frankly, really sad for them. Employers who understand this can show empathy and care in this regard – and that goes a long way to supporting their new colleagues,” said Ann McGlynn, executive director of Tapestry Farms, the non-profit group that helps immigrants in the Quad Cities. (Ms. McGlynn was not at the immigrant meeting, but was asked by the QCBJ to provide insights to the region’s immigrant work experience.)
- Cultural differences: This can be a big challenge and requires much effort and education for the immigrant and employers, said several people at the seminar. On one hand, employers and its managers and employees should be made aware of the religious requirements, such as prayer times, of immigrants. “This is a continuing education progress. It’s a work in progress. I don’t know how to put it any nicer than that,” said Ms. Jaber.
AT A GLANCE: U.S. immigrants and the workplace
- As of 2019, the U.S. had 44.9 million immigrants (foreign-born people) comprising 14% of the national population. – American Immigration Council
- There were about 30.2 million immigrants employed in the U.S. as of September 2023. – USAfacts.org
- The foreign-born population grew by 912,000 people, or about 2%, between 2021 and 2022 – the largest annual growth since an increase of more than 1 million between 2013 and 2014. – Migration Policy Institute
- The top countries of origin for immigrants in the U.S. are: Mexico (24%), India (6%), China (5%), the Philippines (4.5%) and El Salvador (3%). – American Immigration Council
- About 69% of immigrants in the U.S. report speaking English “well” or “very well,” – American Immigrant Council
- About one-third of the immigrants in the U.S. as of 2019 had a college degree, while more than one-fourth has less than a high school diploma. – American Immigration Council
- 28.5 million immigrant workers comprise about 17% of the U.S. workforces as of 2020. – American Immigration Council
- Immigrant-led households across the United States contributed a total of $330.7 billion in federal taxes and $161.7 billion in combined state and local taxes in 2019. – American Immigration Council.
- Immigrants are most numerous in these industries: Health care and social assistance – 4.17 million; manufacturing – 3.38 million; and food services – 2.97 million. – American Immigration Council.
- In the Quad Cities, World Relief Quad Cities has helped resettle more than 3,000 refugees and immigrants since the organization began in 1999. This fiscal year, it expects to resettle 470 immigrants in Illinois and 135 in Iowa.
- Also in the Quad Cities, the Tapestry Farms organization reports working with about 30 immigrant families at any given time.
