Good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California. I am Lata Krishnan, President of American India foundation, member of the Commonwealth Club's Board of Governors and your moderator for today. We welcome our listeners on the radio and we invite everyone to visit the Commonwealth Club on the internet at www.commonwealthclub.org. And now on to today's program. The United States has found itself debating the issue of immigration with record numbers of legal and illegal immigrants entering the US borders each day. While the current debate often centers on what immigrants take from the US, reality confirms that each immigrant brings with them skills, talents and a unique story and the potential for significant contribution. Our program today focuses on the contributions of immigrants to American society and how America can empower immigrants to become economically self sufficient, integrated members of society. And now it's my pleasure to introduce our panelists. Farhana Huq is the Founder and CEO of Creating Economic Opportunities for Women known as CEO Women. Farhana comes from a family of self made entrepreneurs of the South Asian Diaspora. In 2000 she founded CEO Women, the third start up venture she has being involved with after being inspired by the enterprise revolution in her father native Bangladesh and by the struggles that poor single women in her own family face to become self sufficient. Farhana has led CEO Women to win the 2005 Innovation Award from Micro-enterprise Development in the US and the 2004 Isabel Allende Espiritu Award for empowerment of women. Farhana holds a BA from Tufts University in Economics and Philosophy and she is also an Ashoka Fellow. Jane Leu is the Founder and Executive Director of Upwardly Global, a non-profit organization based in San Francisco that brings highly qualified immigrants and employers together. Jane is a nationally recognized social entrepreneur and has devoted her professional life to helping immigrants and refugees achieve economic integration. Before founding Upwardly Global she was the Assistant Director for Resettlement, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the Assistant Director of the RefugeeWorks which provides technical assistance to refugee employment programs. She also help launch seven refugee Welfare-to-Work programs. Jane was also the first Program Coordinator of the Nonprofit Program now the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She holds a master's degree from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and a bachelor's degree from Tufts University. She is also an Ashoka Fellow. Brigitte Marshall is the Director of Oakland Adult and Career Education. Brigitte has been in adult education from more than 13 years. Prior to her current position she worked as a consultant at the California Department of Education. She has also worked on refugee issues in Lahore, Pakistan, served as an English as a second language instructor in Thailand and worked with South East Asians in Central California where she served as a Director of Refugee Assistance Agency. Originally from England Brigitte holds a joined bachelor's and master's degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University. And finally Dr. Joseph Rios is a Workforce Development Consultant and Trainer. Joseph specializes in the enhancement of communication across cultures in the work place. His clients include Intel, AMD, Johnson & Johnson, Capital One and the Westin, Sheraton and Marriott Hotel franchises. He has worked around the world including China, Malaysia, Japan, Spain, France, and Switzerland. Joseph holds master's degree from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a PhD in International Comparative Education from Stanford University. We are pleased to welcome all of our panelists. So the topic being immigrants and what do they bring to the US and I thought this might be a good place to start for all of our panelists. If I may ask each one of them to expound on the question as to why this topic is important for them in the work that they do. Farhana - Thank you Lata, good evening everybody. I wanted to answer that question on two levels, one on a personal level and another on a more macro economic level. This topic is important to me because, one I am the daughter of immigrants, my mother is from Pakistan originally and my father is from Bangladesh. And they came here in the late 60's, early 70's and I have seen the struggles that they have gone through to integrate and simile into a different culture, but also the contributions that they were able to make and particularly around entrepreneurship and small business start up which runs in my family. And on another level I work I run an organization called CEO Women creating economic opportunities for women and we empower low income immigrant refugee women to become entrepreneurs and improve their livelihoods, and I see on a day-to-day basis the potential that immigrant women bring to this country and how that potential is really going unrealized and untapped and the potential that they have to actually contribute to the economy, create jobs for people and also create a stronger localized economy here in the United States. So I felt that the discourse often in and around the issue of immigration is so much centered on illegal, legal, documented, undocumented, should we keep them, should we sent them back; and my point is they are here and what are we going to do with them, and I thought that it would be refreshing to have a display of different vantage points surrounding this topic, because I think the debate is very one sided and there is a lot of other perspectives that need to be shared in the discourse public discourse that's happening today around immigration. And I hope that this panel can bring some of that some of these vantage points forward. Hi I am so I like most people was idealistic getting into this work and I really believed in the US as the land of opportunity. And when I started to work in refugee resettlement on a National Level what I saw was that we were really the land of limited opportunity. So when I started in this field in 96', we were resettling Bosnians with PhD's into jobs in chicken cutting factories and we had Iraqi engineers who we thought made very good hotel cleaners. And at that point I just got angry and I felt like that it was the legacy of all of us as Americans to really preserve that idea that you can work up to your potential in the US, and that we have always benefited from immigrants and we always will, but we have to we have to catch up to where immigrants are and when they are college educated we have to allow them to use their skills in the US. Good evening. I also have two different reasons for wanting to engage in discussions around immigration. As you can hear from my accent I am not a native of Californian, although I think my vowels are falling into pieces a little after 16 years here. I came here in 1991, after working as a very young, idealistic, didn't really know very much, ESL instructor English as the second language instructor in refugee camps in Thailand, where I met the Hmong people for the first time. I had never heard of them before. I had never heard of the country of Laos. I self admittedly said that I was ignorant and didn't know much at the time. And they were all talking about this place called Fresno, which I had also never heard of before, and I thought it was a village in Laos, because they all had relatives there. And they set me straight and let me know that it was in fact in California Central Valley and that many of them many thousands of them were destined to make their homes there, which was a huge shock to me because I was working with them in the context of the refugee camps where they were leading traditional hill tribes' life to the extent that you can in the flat lands of Thailand in a refugee camp. But nonetheless it was clear to me from a tourist visit to California that the acculturation shock they were going to face was going to be extreme. And so I came here initially in 1991, intending to stay for a year and what I can I say, I am still here. So I am a first generation immigrant. But I have been starkly aware over the years that my experience as a white English speaking immigrant with an education from England is extraordinarily different from the experiences of the refugees and immigrants I have worked with over the last 16 years. So I have a personal connection, I also have a professional and frustration driven connection to the issue because I work in and with a number of different systems. At the moment I am the Director of Oakland Adult and Career Education which is in the adult education program and in that role I work with social service agencies, I work with refugee assistance programs, I work with welfare readiness or workforce readiness programs that are working with welfare recipients. And I am constantly astounded by how little the various different systems talk to each other and work in synchronization with each other, which again is a stark reminder to me that we lack an integration policy. And in the context of immigration questions I believe that we have to engage around the question of integration policy and looking at more coordinated services, so that we can really offer individuals who come to this country for a variety of different reasons the opportunity to maximize their resources. Yes, good evening. My work is increasingly based in California and particularly in the hotel and service industry. I work almost everyday with hourly employees, principally Latinos. I have worked the gamut. I have worked for very large corporations, building teams virtual teams, global teams, working together around the globe. I have worked with different industries in California. But there has been none other like working with the hourly employee, who we tried to develop into management, that is supervisory positions through to management, in all kinds of ways. I have a background in teaching English as a second language. I did that for many years before going back to Stanford. And I did PhD my PhD was in Anthropology in Education really. And as an ethnographer it has been very I don't know how to say this useful or, it just sort of evolved in a way that I spend a lot of time with folks hearing their stories and those stories evoke stories that my family has told or perhaps unconsciously relate to me. My father and mother are both from El Paso, Texas. I grew up in a bilingual family. And so there is a kind of a connection that I experience with the workforce in California, especially in the service industry, which is principally Latino, that for me both opens my eyes and ears and heart to those experiences and harkens back to what things I have heard from my family, but also gives an opportunities through me to learn skills and knowledge that will help them to improve their lot within a system that's quite foreign to them. So this topic is due to me in several ways and ironically the corporate work has diminished and this line of activity has increased tremendously because of the need, thank you. You are listening to the Commonwealth Club of California Radio Program, and today's focus is the contributions of immigrants and how to empower them to become productive members of society. Our panelists are Farhana Huq, Founder and CEO of CEO Women, Jane Leu, Founder and Executive Director of Upwardly Global, Brigitte Marshall, Director of Oakland Adult and Career Education, and Joseph Rios, Workforce Development Consultant and Trainer. I have a question for you Farhana. In your area of work what potential do you see going untapped with respect to immigrants and what they bring with them, and what might be a possible solution? Well the line of work that I am in again is empowering refugee women to become entrepreneurs and just in terms of sheer numbers, in terms of market size that's out there we have identified nearly 127,000 low income immigrant refugee women that have the potential to become entrepreneurs and start their own business, particularly Latino women owned business since 1996 have had 121 percent growth rate in the start up of businesses. So there is this huge nationally, a 121 percent nationally and so particularly 127,000 women are out there and how do we reach them, how do we give them the resources, the training, the access that they need to enable entrepreneurship so that they can actually create businesses and start jobs and employ other people and really contribute to the local economies. So that's the the potential that I see going untapped. And the numbers are even larger nationally. Brigitte, do you like to answer the same question? Yes, from a slightly different perspective. The immigrants who we serve in Oakland Adult and Career Education tend to be very driven, very focused, very ambitious and also extremely challenged. I am constantly in awe of individuals who have worked a full day and then come to a three hour class at night, or who have worked the night shift, catch a few hours sleep, drop children off at school and then come to class in the morning or in the afternoon. I see individuals who are trying to swim in the context of a service delivery system that has presented them with the opportunity to sink or swim, the the classic clichéd challenge that I think is the other side of the land of opportunity. And I see opportunities to extent a variety of different supports and help and services that would offer them the chance to be more successful. I am speaking in generalities because the specifics are numerous and detailed. But I will try and give an example. Many of our refugees and immigrants interact with the welfare system. And as you probably are all aware, there are time limits attached to receipt welfare support, there are time limits attached to training opportunities and English language instructional opportunities. There are good reasons for those kinds of limitations, but it represents a stymieing and a squashing of the opportunity for people with drive and determination and potential to move forward and become more productive in the context of their own lives and also in the lives of their children, because of course welfare dependence has a huge impact on the second generation. So in a very general sense, in the context of my work, where we work with limited English speakers, we also work with folks who have basic skill needs who need to attain a high school diploma as an adult or a GED and also vocational skills training; I feel great frustration when systemic barriers are placed in the way of individuals who have the potential and have the capacity if given the appropriate support, to develop their skills and become more fully contributing members of the community. Thank you, Brigitte. I have a question given Jane that your work involves integrating the immigrant population into the workforce, what do you see as the most pressing challenges immigrants face when coming to the US, in terms of applying their skills to the work force? So, our organization Upwardly Global basically works to make our system clear. So on the one hand we have the supply of skilled immigrant labor and on the other hand we don't really have the demand yet from the American companies. And to really qualify this you hear a lot in the press about H visas and immigrants working in the Tech sector. We are talking about the million immigrants in the US who are illegal and who have a bachelor's degree from their home country, who are not working in the Tech sector and who are actually working in unskilled jobs that don't match their backgrounds. So that's where we are operating in. And I think the best way to explain the challenges that they face in applying their skills are is what I knew normally hear from employers. So I would be talking to say a Fortune 1000 employer and they will always say, "No we would absolutely hire immigrants. If they went to school in the US, if they speak English really well, if they don't need visa sponsorship and if they work for one of our competitors, I really don't understand why we won't hire them." And that's what we are up against is that the exact reason why you would want to hire immigrants, that they bring different perspectives, that they have international experience, that they are bilingual is not the reason employers want to hire them. They are more used to hiring people who look like us and were educated in the US. So that's the challenge that we are against. It's trying to help those educational degrees and that experience translate into a very American centric hiring system, with individuals from all over the world. We are working with people from 90 foreign countries. Thank you, Jane. And Farhana, given that you have spend so many years in the recent past working on creating economic opportunities for women immigrants, could you comment on the same question which is, what are the most pressing challenges they face when coming to the US? Well I was just with a student the other day, her name is Yessica, and she is from Peru, and I asked her that very question. We were on the way to an event together. And she is a chemical engineer from Peru. Her husband is a food engineer. And she is working on starting her own jewelry business. She actually did start it. She was inspired from her work in the chemical engineering industry, because she loved working in the labs with wiring and doing different experiments and that translated over to jewelry. But she came and she told me that the number one barrier she faced was really English learning English. She thought she would come here from Peru, be able to get a job in engineering over here and it didn't happen, because her English was too low and she didn't have the resources to spend, the amount of time in classes' everyday, to learn English. Her husband, who is the food engineer, works at Safeway now, and he is not very happy there. And there is really not a strong system in place for him to move up, because his English skills are also pretty low. So that's one thing, it's the English language. The second thing and so hence starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur seems like a very viable career path because they are not having to compete or go through a job some kind of job interview process and they don't have the networks to help them get jobs. Secondly is just what I said; the networks. They don't know a lot of people that can help them get the jobs that they need to get, that matches their skills like Jane was saying. I would say that's really, really big and third is the cultural shifts the culture of doing business here can be very different, the pace of business culture here in this country can be very different, even language nuances, sending an email in, addressing at a certain way, or signing at a certain way. There are a lot of subtleties that even we struggle with, in our everyday workforce and culture, let alone someone coming from a different country having to learn all of that as well as the subtleties are some of the biggest barriers that I have seen women at least in my work in CEO Women, face. And considering these challenges Joseph, in the work that you do, what are some of the reasons why the immigrants you work with or teach, come here? Oh there are many. And many of them are things that I until I did this work had really no idea about. Such things as the obvious, because you can you can make a better living of course, and as we say in Spanish (Spanish) which is to improve your lot. But that has to do very specifically with with numbers. I have been told by them between $5 to $10 a day, salary in Mexico, where they come from, and I am talking again about a particular workforce. These are not engineers, although I believe many of them could be and should be. But if you are looking at may be a daily rate of $5 to $10 and then come here at $10 an hour, that's a very attractive proposition. That is one example. The other extreme is to get away form things. There are all kinds of things we can imagine we would we might want to get away from. Family members, situations, relationships it's been that detail of life story that has has surprised not surprised me as much as it has given me a strong sense of the the need to look at and talk to these folks as people as opposed to the filter I have tended to use, which is that of an immigrant something different or someone who fits a category. In fact their stories are not unlike anyone of ours and our reasons for travel. I just today interviewed a few folks about about just traveling in the United States. They came here to visit and see California and they stayed for lifetime. And there are many reasons. Economic is obviously the major one. You ask anyone that I work with, that would be the reason but thank you.