Silvia Ciriac, 36, of Queens is a single mother of a teenager, being a resident of the US for nearly eight years she does not want to come back to her home country. “The situation in my country is tough, I came here and brought my daughter for a better and different life,” Ciriac said.
Romania native, she did not graduate any universities and came to the US with her daughter, a freshman in The Queens College. Ciriac quit her last job as an accountant half a year ago because of the personal problem.
Immigrants represent 40 percent of the New York City’s population and 43 percent of the workforce. But still, people like Ciriac, coming here from abroad experience different kind of difficulties with language, employment and finding place to live.
Mayor Micheal R. Bloomberg declared in his last State of the City address, Americans should “fix broken immigration system.”
His main argument is, that immigrants are good for the economy because they open businesses, create jobs and pay taxes. He said that newcomers are crucial to City’s success.
Ciriac had gone through hundreds of interviews to find a job. Recently she found out about StreetWise Partners Inc. through her friend who found a job with the help of this organization and could realize her career goals.
“I want to improve my interviewing skills and computer skills,” Ciriac said “I am hopeful. I think they will help me.”
StreetWise Partners Inc. is a non-profit organization that offers job-training programs for people who face multiple barriers to employment. Immigrants should qualify following criteria: low-income, at least high school diploma, legal permition to work in the US.
The job skills training program lasts one year, first three month is the most intensive part of the program, trainees meet with our mentors once a week for a couple of hours. They go through a curriculum, which covers resume preparation interview skills, networking, computer skills and during the following nine month trainees work on their six goal career work plan an individual plan of what they need to achieve.
“There are several things we do with our graduates: we take them from unemployed to employed, take them from not having any health care benefits to having health care benefits, take them from a lower salary to a higher weekly salary, take them from a job with no advancement prospects to a job with advancement prospects,” Melanie Christianson,
Interim Executive Director in the StreetWise Partners, Inc. said,
“It’s not just straight getting them a job but put them on a path to a career”
According to the report of Department of City Planning, the working ages – 25 to 54 years – between 40 and 50 percent of all city residents in the labor force are immigrants. Immigrants comprise a majority of employed workers in manufacturing, construction, and in many service industries. The foreign-born people also have a major impact on the city’s housing: 48 percent of recently occupied housing units belong to immigrant households.
Olesya Luzinova is Alumni of a StreetWise Partners job-training program and a resident of the US for two years. “Graduating from an university in Uzbekistan I could not realize myself as a professional there; I had no opportunity, that is why I came here,” Luzinova said.
Coming to the US Luzinova experienced different obstacles in finding a job and the first one was a professional network. “Language was not a problem for me but people who come here have no professional network that they could turn to, but StreetWise Partners can give them such opportunity,” Luzinova said.
Rasheem Palmer, Client Services Manager and the person who works with StreetWise Partners for six years says that each year around 300 people come asking for the help. “Usually 40 per cent are people whose English is not their first language,” Palmer said.
