News

Career

Foreign-born professionals struggle

By Cox News Service
Published April 13, 2005

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San Marcos, Mexico-- Roughly built, prison-like cells in a walled, abandoned lot serve as the only home for Filomeno Carrillo Gerardo, 18, while he trains to become an accountant.

The concrete block rooms, this small town's version of public housing, have a primitive bathroom and are furnished with a cot, a rope to hang clothes, maybe a chair. But they mean the difference between a career and a hardscrabble peasant's future for Carrillo Gerardo and a few others.

"I am preparing to achieve a career so I don't have to suffer like my parents suffer now," he says. "It's better to have a career than to be a peasant."

But in Mexico, as in other developing countries, a college degree doesn't always lead to a better life. The attorney who pushed to build that public housing, Carlos Villanueva, now slices sushi in an Atlanta restaurant. He shares an apartment with, among others, an accountant, another lawyer and a university professor, once professionals in Mexico but now illegal immigrants.

A lack of jobs in some fields, low salaries in others, prejudicial hiring policies in their home country and the globalization of the labor force often drive professionals from other countries to overstay tourist visas or enter the U.S. illegally for a chance at menial labor.

Isaac Baroi ran a journalism center and wrote books about human rights in his native Bangladesh, but his outspoken views on oppression of Christians in that Islamist state sent him to the United States seeking political asylum. He now lives in a cramped apartment with his family and works as a teaching assistant at the International Community School. His eyes still get fiery when he talks about the work he did and people he met back home. "A profession in America and a profession in Asia are two different things," he said. "I was one of the people who introduced modern journalism in our society. How do you think I feel?" There are no reliable numbers of former professionals in the United States, legally or illegally. But a recent study by the U.S. Census Bureau showed that, of about 27.5 million foreign-born people over age 25 in the country, about 9 million had between an associate degree and a doctorate. Of those, about 4.3 million were not citizens.

These people often arrive in the United States with an H-1B visa, a special visa for professionals whose skills are in high demand in the United States, such as nurses. But this year, the number of available H-1B visas was exhausted by the first day of the fiscal year, when they became available. And the jobs the professionals are trained for might not classify as critically understaffed here.

The problem lies more in the home countries, said Sergio Torres, who arrived here on an H-1B visa eight years ago to become director of technology at Descartes Systems Group, an Atlanta software company.

"Many, many doctors and engineers come here illegally to work as painters, taxi drivers, and sometimes they make a lot more than if they were working in their fields in our country," he said. "Even though they are well-educated, they prefer to work in a trade (in the U.S.)."

An employer's market

Among the older careers such as doctor or architect, there are just too many applicants and not enough demand, he said. That drives salaries down. Mexico City is full of dentists who are driving taxicabs because they cannot make a living in their chosen field. But among new careers, including Internet-related fields, the jobs are only now starting to materialize, Torres said.

"Though schools are beginning to teach the careers, they are not satisfying the internal demand for graduates," Torres said.

And job candidates also have to deal with blatant sexism and ageism in the workplace. Want ads, even for clerical positions, often specify the sex, age and, sometimes, even the dress size or at least "a good appearance" for applicants if they are going to be dealing with the public. Meanwhile, former bankers who drive taxis or make a try for the border say they've been fired after turning 45.

Torres said no one enforces workplace rules against such discrimination in Mexico, as is done in the United States. "After 40 years of age, you begin to struggle to find a job," he said.

Torres compared the situation with what happens in India, where an abundance of highly skilled workers for years has attracted first entry-level computer jobs and now even highly sophisticated occupations such as X-ray analysis and stock research.

"Even in India, these people are paid a pittance," Torres said. Baroi, from Bangladesh, says he has seen firsthand what happens to Indian job candidates who place all their hopes in education only to have to scratch and fight for an entry-level job.

"India exploits a lot," he said. "The Indian level of exploitation of their professionals is very, very bad."

Torres, who has two master's degrees and has taught in Mexican universities, said he once had a company in Mexico that provided logistics software for transportation systems, Just Computacion S.A. de C.V. But he ran into another problem: For such highly technical work, his clients put more faith in U.S. companies than in his homegrown Mexican business.

So he gave up, closed up shop and went to work for the competition instead.

'Genie out of bottle'

Steve Moore of the Cato Institute's Free Enterprise Fund in Washington blames the highly centralized, government-managed economies in some countries for the lack of jobs for professionals there. He said Mexico has made great strides to open its economy and join the free market but still has far to go.

And he said more competition among job seekers, professional and otherwise, is the reality and the future both in the developing world and in the United States.

"The globalization of the economy is a genie that's out of the bottle," Moore said. "There's no putting it back in."

For his part, Carrillo Gerardo has no thought of leaving to go to the United States. He wants to finish his career. His parents have sacrificed much to help him pay for his education, and they tell him not to disappoint them. So going north is not an option.

"First, I want to finish my career," he says. "I would only go if I can't find a job."

[Last modified April 19, 2005, 10:33:23]