It's very possible that all or most of the net new caregivers entering our field in the next decade will need to be international (foreign-born) newcomers. While hiring foreign-born workers is a staple of the home care industry, hiring asylees and refugees is certainly not common practice. However, the population of asylees and refugees is relatively accessible compared with other programs that carry the both the paperwork and political stigma of "visa" or "immigration" programs.
Organizations that have made the commitment to welcoming asylees and refugees to their workforces share four key tenets that guide their efforts.
Company: Their company is deeply committed at a cultural level to incorporating foreign-born workers into their DEI&B beliefs.
Community: They focus on specific communities where there is already a seed of belonging, meaning small clusters of people who identify with a specific ethnicity or nationality that can be built upon and 'grown' into a larger effort.
Career: They make a commitment to wrapping job opportunities with enhancements for overcoming the social barriers to work, thereby offering more than a new job - more like something approaching a new life.
Coalition: They don't try to go it alone. They tap into existing coalitions and advocacy for welcoming and assimilating international newcomers.
While tapping into international newcomers is still, candidly, work that will only have incremental short-term gains, positioning yourself to be competitive in the this large population for the long term requires planting your own seed with the international newcomer community now. Please see additional detail in our recorded briefing on this topic.