Refugee Employment Options
Since being dismissed from his ever-so-brief temp-to-hire position, the husband/father in our refugee family has run out of options for income. He must pay $575 a month for his one bedroom apartment. He currently has $140.00 to his name.
Our refugee resettlement funds are used up, the Matching Grant program is finished, and job prospects are thin. This is the first time out of 7 resettlement efforts that we have failed to find at least one member of the family an ongoing job before funds were exhausted.
Now what?
In Wisconsin, this family is eligible for W-2 (Wisconsin Works), which is a welfare-type program. We have worked hard to avoid this, but now it is our only option. We’re not happy about this because the W-2 program is quite challenging for an English-language-limited person to succeed and requires an extremely time consuming effort from us as the co-sponsors.
There are several subsets to the W-2 program and our refugee family is eligible for only one of them. It is called CSJ placement – Community Service Job placement. This is where an individual works a 40-hour week at a job site doing community service in exchange for $673 a month. English classes will count for 4 hours a week, making his obligation 36 hours per week of community service.
Normally, the work done at a job site by the client satisfies the hours requirement. However, W-2 won’t place him at a work site right away. They wait for at least 30 days so he can look for a job.
Looking for a job is his full time obligation and it must be documented each week. In this case, he must look for a job and document his search to equal 36 hours a week he would normally be working. Think about that for a moment and let it sink in… He must do some type of search activity for employment that adds up to 36 hours per week for the next 4 weeks!
He can look in the newspaper, he can look online, he can fill out applications and he can go on interviews. His drive time does not count except for the time spent BETWEEN appointments, not to and from his home.
So, imagine yourself in this position. You can’t read English or understand the employment section of the newspaper, you don’t know how to go online, you don’t drive and you also don’t have a clue how to fill out an application, or how to call for an interview. How do you go about fulfilling your 36 hours of required activity? Could you even meet this requirement if you weren’t limited by your understanding?
The caseworker does not help you do this – at least his caseworker made it very clear that she would not help. There are resources out there like free classes on how to interview and write a resume, but think of the amount of English you would need to complete such a class. And yet it is imperative that each Friday by 4:30 he accounts for 36 hours of documented job searching time.
Oh, and one more thing. He must complete 4 full weeks of this BEFORE getting a full payment of $673.00, which would come out to less than $4 per hour.
It will take 4 volunteers, if we can get that many, an extra 9 hours a week on top of regular refugee resettlement activities to pull this off. That’s going to be tough. But we’re 3 weeks in now.
Why am I sharing this with you? I want you to understand that refugee resettlement can be gratifying. It can be quite rewarding to help another person take back control of their life. Yet, it doesn’t always go as planned. Sometimes we have to adjust. Sometimes we have to venture into areas that are uncomfortable or unknown.
Sometimes we have to face the systems that our society has put in place that we would rather avoid. Systems like W-2 are, on the one hand life saving, and on the other hand so messed up that those who are not trying to screw the system have trouble making any progress at all!
All of this reinforces the importance of helping refugees become self-sufficient quickly. We don’t want to mess with public support because it’s too messy and inefficient. That path should truly be the last resort.
Can I have an Amen!?
