As refugee numbers plummet, workforce feels impact

Students graduating from Hoover High School created quilts expressing their feelings about their journey to America.

San Diego Union-Tribune

June 22, 2018 4:40 PM PT

As refugees continue to trickle into the U.S., many who work with new arrivals worry that the low numbers will have a lasting impact on economies, schools and families in places like San Diego, where many used to resettle.

The International Rescue Committee, a resettlement agency with offices in the San Diego area, released a report Wednesday detailing what it has seen around the country since arrivals dipped to the lowest numbers the program has seen since it began in 1980.

Since President Donald Trump initiated the first travel ban, refugee arrivals plummeted across the country. So far in fiscal 2018, the U.S. has resettled 14,331 refugees which is less than a third of the 45,000 ceiling set by Trump.

Employers in industries like hospitality, manufacturing and meatpacking are facing labor shortages without new arrivals eager for work experience that doesn’t require English-language fluency, the IRC report says.

Donna Duvin, executive director for the IRC in San Diego, said that her office gets calls at least weekly from employers in San Diego’s hospitality and construction industries asking if there are new arrivals looking for work.

“In the past, we would call them and ask for placements,” Duvin said. “Now employers are calling us seeking potential employees.”

Duvin noted that many San Diego jobs are also tied to refugee resettlement and worried that organizations would shrink if arrivals don’t increase soon.

Bob Walsh, a volunteer who helps refugees resettle, said he’s seen staffing cuts at different agencies.

“How hard is it going to be to build this back up?” he said, hopeful that at some point the U.S. will again accept refugees in larger numbers.

Mikey Knab, chair of Business For Good San Diego and owner of Ponce’s Mexican Restaurant on Adams Avenue, said refugees are important to small businesses in San Diego as employees, customers and owners.

He said he hears from fellow restaurant owners multiple times a day on Facebook or through email that they’re having trouble finding line cooks or dishwashers.

“There’s a lot of competition for labor, and it’s hard to find good help,” Knab said. “The refugee community has been a place where we have found good employees who are committed and contribute in a positive way.”

He has a friend who owns a restaurant in City Heights who told him that some of his most supportive customers are refugees.

Refugees need help when they first arrive, he said, but they more than make up for it later as their ability to contribute economically increases.

About a third of San Diego County’s entrepreneurs are immigrants, according to a study done by New American Economy for the Welcoming San Diego initiative, which makes them more than 22 percent more likely to start businesses than U.S.-born workers. Refugees, Knab said, are the most likely of any immigrant group to open their own businesses and become entrepreneurs.

“For those of us in the position of trying to build long-term successful businesses in this community, we need that kind of drive,” Knab said.

People who work with refugee youth are worried that school programming for new arrivals will have to change if fewer continue to come.

“It’s more challenging than ever now to provide services to incoming refugees when you have no idea when they’re coming, if they’re coming,” Duvin of the IRC said.

Maureen Magee, spokeswoman for San Diego Unified, confirmed that several schools had seen reductions in new arrival students but said that the district does not currently have plans to reduce the level of services for those students.

The Mira Mesa area has actually seen a recent influx in new students from Guatemala, Magee noted.

Laurel Dalsted, development manager at the IRC in San Diego, said the low arrivals are also impacting families. The U.S. used to prioritize reuniting families, but now many have been split apart as the countries that the U.S. will allow refugees to enter from have changed under the Trump administration.

One Somali family made up of two parents and their four adult children planned to come with spouses and grandchildren toward the end of 2016, she said. They began the approval process together and believed they would be resettled together in San Diego in a matter of months.

The parents and two adult children came with their families. The other two parts of the family are still left behind in a refugee camp since the first travel ban blocked people from Somalia from entering the U.S.

The grandfather uses Skype to talk to the grandchildren he left behind.

“What do I tell him when he says, ‘Why can’t I see you?’” Dalsted recalled the grandfather saying.

Abed Keddo, owner of Suri Market in El Cajon, employs Syrian refugees. The slowdown of refugees has made it easier to find housing for those who do arrive, and rents have come down a little bit, he said.

Still, he has an employee whose daughter is still waiting in Jordan to relocate to the U.S.

“She cries every other day when she talks to her daughter,” Keddo said.

Though the number of refugees coming to the U.S. has dwindled, the community that supports refugees in San Diego is planning a celebration of World Refugee Day, which was Wednesday of this week. The event will take place Saturday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Copley-Price Family YMCA.

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