A Fund's Unique Mission Helps Refugees and Immigrants Chart a Better Path to the Future
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Afghan women demanding refugee status outside United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in New Delhi, India, 2021. PradeepGaurs/shutterstock
Refugees face countless challenges when they arrive in a host country — from navigating an unfamiliar setting and learning a new language, to meeting immigration requirements and finding a job.
The WES Mariam Assefa Fund is responding to those needs by providing grants totaling $200,000 to four U.S. organizations that are helping newly settled Afghan refugees. The organizations, Community Services Agency (COMSA) in Green Bay, Wisconsin; Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative (I-ARC) in upstate New York; Ohlone College in Fremont, California; and TIS Foundation in Washington, D.C., provide services that address different aspects of the refugee experience.
That’s not all the Mariam Assefa Fund has been up to. Shortly after it announced the funds for Afghan refugees, it made an even bigger announcement: grants totaling $1 million to organizations in the U.S. and Canada to create more inclusive employer practices and career pathways for immigrants and refugees.
While there’s been a surge in short-term donations to help refugees, particularly in response to the war in Ukraine, the fund is one of a much smaller number of philanthropies focusing on people from Afghanistan as they embark on the long-term slog of finding economic stability in a new country, and in the wake of a war that is already being drowned out in the cacophony of current events.
World Education Services (WES) is a nonprofit that provides credentials for immigrants, refugees and international students. In 2019, WES created a philanthropic arm named after Mariam Assefa, who headed the organization for 38 years. The fund describes itself as “the only philanthropic initiative focused exclusively on economic inclusion and mobility for immigrants and refugees in North America.” Since it was launched, the fund has awarded over $18 million in grants and impact investments to over 100 organizations in the U.S. and Canada. It aims to invest over $50 million by 2025.
“Our goal is to advance social and economic inclusion for immigrants and refugees in the U.S. and in Canada,” said Monica Munn, managing director of philanthropy. “First, how can we unlock economic opportunity for immigrants and refugees? Second, how can we build wealth for individuals and their families? Third, how can we grow power for immigrants and refugees? And lastly, how can we advance justice — more just systems, more just communities — for immigrants and refugees?”
As IP reported recently, organizations working to support refugees often struggle for funding depending on public attitudes toward immigration at the time, what countries the immigrants are coming from, and the policies of whichever party holds power in Washington. For these groups, the arrival of the WES Mariam Assefa Fund, a young funder with ambitious goals and an apparent willingness to go big, has to be welcome news.
Creating a win-win
Immigration is a tried and true weapon in the culture wars, with Republicans routinely denouncing Democrats for promoting lax immigration policies and open borders. The notion that immigrants and refugees who come to the U.S. will steal jobs from American workers is a familiar feature of anti-immigrant arguments, and stokes fear and hostility toward newcomers to the U.S.
Many experts have debunked this “immigrants will steal your job” narrative. A recent report in American Economic Review: Insights, for example, highlights the many companies — and jobs — created by newcomers to the U.S. “The findings suggest that immigrants act more as ‘job creators’ than ‘job takers’ and play outsized roles in U.S. high-growth entrepreneurship,” according to the report.
A recent Mariam Assefa Fund grantee, an employment program at Ohlone College in Fremont, California, offers an on-the-ground refutation of anti-immigrant sentiments. Participants in the Smart Manufacturing Technology Back to Work Program, which was created by Ohlone and the City of Fremont Economic Development Department, receive a paycheck while they get job training and work experience. Just this month, 10 graduates of the program were celebrated at a ceremony hosted by Tesla, and all were offered jobs, including stock options and benefits, with the company.
The new funding from the Mariam Assefa Fund will enable the program, which also received support from the Alameda County Workforce Development Board, to expand to include Afghan refugees in its next cohort, beginning this fall. Participants in the program will also have access to English language classes.
Asbury Lockett, program manager for industry relations at Ohlone, said the program is a win-win for both the refugees and local manufacturers, who can’t fill many low-skill jobs at their companies. “Employers have been out beating the bushes trying to find employees,” he said. In fact, according to Lockett, before the partnership with the Mariam Assefa Fund, Ohlone was having trouble finding participants to fill the next cohort.
By building on a program that already existed and has shown success, the Mariam Assefa Fund was able to compound its impact. “As a funder, we think about how our funds can be catalytic,” Munn said. “We’re never going to be the biggest check in the room. Like many areas of workforce development and education, where you take public dollars, private sector dollars, philanthropic dollars, and mash them together to meet the needs of as many people as possible, that comes together here. So our funding enables Ohlone to include refugees in the program, which is huge when we’re talking about high-quality, high-growth jobs.”
Underemployment and brain waste
The manufacturing jobs landed by participants in the Ohlone program provide opportunities for advancement, according to Lockett, but they are still considered low-skilled, and starting salaries are at least $20 an hour. As welcome as such jobs are in the short term, they don’t provide livable wages for families over the long term. They also don’t address the “brain waste” phenomenon so many college-educated immigrants confront when they get stalled in jobs that don’t match their experience or expertise. Twenty-one percent of foreign-born college graduates experience brain waste, according to a report by the Migration Policy Institute; numbers are highest among Black and Latino college graduates.
Battling brain waste and creating better job opportunities are issues that the WES Mariam Assefa Fund have tried to address from the start, as IP previously reported. In a $1.8 million round of grants last year, for example, the fund supported 12 U.S. and Canadian organizations working to improve job quality, increase worker power, and create more inclusive workplaces. The grantee organizations support workers in a range of industries, including healthcare, the garment industry, tech, agriculture and “for hire” driving.
The fund’s more recent $1 million investment, announced just last week, builds on the 2021 grants to create greater opportunities for immigrants in a number of job sectors. The fund also plans to create a “community of practice” by bringing U.S. and Canadian organizations together to share information and experience.
Will employers do more to provide fair wages and opportunities for growth to employees, including immigrants and refugees? They may not have a choice — a point Munn made last year. “Across the U.S. and Canada, workers are demanding better jobs — jobs that pay a living wage, offer good benefits, and provide career and wealth-building opportunities,” she said. “With a tight labor market and millions of unfilled roles in fast-growing sectors, employers must find ways to create more equitable workplaces and recruit, retain and upskill immigrant and refugee workers.”
