America needs to really see us Black immigrant workers in our white-collar jobs | Opinion

NEW YORK—Several months ago, I googled “immigrant workers” and “immigrants in the workplace.” Images of farmworkers, construction laborers and some health service workers came up. None for writers, journalists or communications consultants, the jobs I’ve held.

The search results confirmed what I’ve suspected for a while: If you’re an immigrant or child of immigrants with a white-collar job, your experiences and contributions don’t factor much in conversations about the American workforce or the immigration system. That disconnect needs to be fixed. The most high profile proof was on full display during the disastrous presidential debate, thrust on us in the form of loaded statements from Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump about immigrants taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.”

Naturally, everyone across color lines wondered what the hell are Black jobs. But not that many asked about the unsaid part of that statement, the assumption of what constitutes immigrant jobs. Collectively,  we gave a pass on the assumption that everyone is clear on what immigrants do for a living. This mischaracterization must be corrected, especially since our group – with our umpteenth degrees and certifications, desk jobs and salaries – can serve as a bridge to understanding how immigration, the workforce and building strong communities intersect.

First, let’s set the record straight about the jobs immigrants are qualified and eligible to perform. Per Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released in May, the foreign-born comprised in 2023:

• 18.6% of the workforce, 29 million out of 131 million workers. 
• 50.8% work in service occupations; natural resources, construction and maintenance fields; and production, transportation and material moving. 
• 49.1% are in either managerial and professional roles, 36.1%, or sales and finance, 13%. 

Yes, that’s half of all immigrant workers – a whopping 14.5 million people of us– missing from the top search results. And, that’s just the people born abroad, not including the children of immigrants also working in white-collar roles. 

Yet, in the weeks since the train-wreck of a debate, the many memes and reels showing all kinds of Black people don’t point out which among them are immigrants to dispel the myth from both sides.  

What immigrant jobs look like 

Data aside, seeing the skewed images of what work immigrants do especially bothers me because of my own family’s experiences in the workforce. My amazing parents worked primarily as a home health aide and livery cab driver when we arrived here 35 years ago. To me, those jobs to make ends meet never defined them because I first knew them in Haiti as trained professionals with viable ventures in their own right.

Still, while they worked manual jobs, they drilled into our heads that we were to complete college to avoid the backbreaking, low-paying labor associated with new immigrants. That was always the plan. As adults, my seven siblings and I have delivered – working as a sonographer, retail chain regional director, journalist/communications consultant, occupational therapist, high school teacher, IT systems architect and youth counselor. 

I won’t even go into the cousins who went the classic Haitian routes of doctors, lawyers and engineers. Nor will I dwell too much on the fact that so Black doctors in the U.S. were Haitian for a long time.

Yet, by Google’s algorithmic standards, none of us are immigrant workers. Neither, I guess, are Haitian Americans like the White House Press Secretary, president of Rice University or former president of Harvard — to name a few. Outside of the Haitian bubble, no one illustrates this point more right now than presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, some of you who might find this opinion elitist. I’m not saying that white-collar immigrants are any better intrinsically than new arrivals in low-income. I’m saying that both white-collar and blue-collar roles should be a source of pride for our own families and communities, and America at large. As a nation of immigrants, all Americans should recognize that we’re everywhere, be grateful for that and value all immigrant workers. It’s not ok to use blue-collar immigrants to foment resentment in that sector and ignore white-coller immigrants to perpetuate false views about who sits in these offices running so much of this country.

Seen, yet not seen in the workplace 

I have a few theories about why immigrants are there, but not seen in white-collar jobs – all tied to systemic racism that is. 

One is that we’re so hyper-focused on success ourselves, we don’t have time to question the status quo. At work, we check off “African-American,” join the African American employees group and rightly support HBCU recruiting drives. We’re so grateful for our bon travay, we don’t tell folks that we identify more as Haitian American, Caribbean American or just plain Black more than we see ourselves as African American. We also don’t tell HR to source immigrant talent from nearby commuter colleges down the road in addition to recruiting from mid-Atlantic HBCUs. 

Honestly, who has time for all that when a project is due and the effort isn’t valued by the job or the school? I get it, I’ve been there. I’ve even tried it, but trying to change systemic, entrenched practices is like trying to move a boulder up a hill with a fly swatter.

Classism and racism play a role too in this apparent erasure. There’s just something about coming to America the so-called “right way,” as a properly documented immigrant or H-1B visa holder. Maybe it’s the act of flying in that makes some of us feel like we’re better than the newer “migrants,” poor Black and Brown people, arriving by sea or land. 

It’s also more palatable for upwardly mobile immigrants raised to pursue an upper-middle existence to focus on those hallmarks, like moving to the ‘burbs, in our version of white (jobs?) flight. Recently, a few political experts broke down how and why doing better economically, and all its trappings, draws some immigrants toward the Republican Party. see this come up A major downside, of course, is that public officials can then ignore those communities’ needs more easily.

Socially, lumping all of us into the “immigrant workforce” would reveal too much about our broken, racial-biased immigration system. It would highlight our economy’s dependence on immigrant labor in the fields, the factories, the office and at headquarters, proving yet again that efforts to keep America white are unrealistic and unattainable. It might also force policymakers to abandon or justify politically expedient “hurry up and shut the door” measures over a fair, clear, consistent immigration system. 

So what to do now? As this country becomes more and more diverse, we must recognize the full spectrum of the immigrant workforce and its potential to impact the workplace, our communities and our politics. 

We have to talk about the difference between having a degree and a pedigree for us office newbies seeking career advancement, which a few platforms – like Upwardly Global and Zaka Connect – have started to do. Even I wrote a very modest how-to book, Scripts for Success, for my siblings – pre ChatGPT – dealing with these advocacy scenarios. We must talk about equity with a national origin lens, as enshrined in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and EEOC compliance statements, to better serve immigrant employees’ unique needs.

When Lin-Manuel Miranda penned “Hamilton,” he was so right to highlight the country’s first treasurer as a white-collar immigrant. We’ve been getting it done since America’s inception. Our nation’s idea of what makes an immigrant an immigrant shouldn’t be as old as the country though. So let’s push for better, more representative results – on Google and on policy. 

The post America needs to really see us Black immigrant workers in our white-collar jobs | Opinion appeared first on The Haitian Times.

---

America needs to really see us Black immigrant workers in our white-collar jobs | Opinion was first posted on July 31, 2024 at 9:11 am.