The People's Money (2022-2023)

What problem would you like to solve?

Numerous migrants arrive in NYC, with skills, education and experience, but are obliged to take survival jobs rather than get back into their own fields. They are given a choice of jobs that usually require work in a supermarket, warehouse, or service profession, that rarely takes advantage of their backgrounds or their aspirations. This makes them feel demeaned and can create a long-seated sense of humiliation, which does not allow them to integrate easily in their new homes.

Why is it important to solve? Why is it relevant for the community?

We have shortages in many key professions that require an education and experience. Communities need nurses, ambulance drivers, teachers, and doctors. While it is clear that migrants need to be able to adapt their knowledge to US Standards, the barrier to entry often appears insurmountable. New migrants need to feel relevant, useful and independent. Many want to practice their profession or to achieve their dreams. The result is better mental health for the migrants with greater financial independence, and more rapid assimilation into the community.

Organizations exist, such as WES, who use experience equivalency formulas to determine how a person’s degrees and work experience can be translated for use by American colleges and employers. Rather than need to start from the beginning at prohibitive cost and time, migrants can use their pre-existing knowledge to take tests, and achieve employment viability.

What idea do you have to address the problem?

Promote use of equivalency matrices that compare the quality of coursework from Universities in typical migrant-origin countries to equivalent coursework in the US so that migrants do not need to restart their education from the beginning.  

Explore the idea of a universal education matrix so that it is easier for universities and employers to cross-compare levels of understanding. Work with NYC Universities to see how willing they would be to accept foreign coursework towards achieving undergraduate and graduate degree requirements. 

Work with industries to enable job experience tests to see what additional training or up-skilling is needed for them to hire migrants, and develop them in-house, using their prior experience.

Ensure migrants understand that WES and other groups exist, and encourage them to invest in getting their help.

Who would that help?

All migrants seeking to create a new life for themselves as productive members of local communities.

What NYC borough would benefit from your idea?

All