Job Discussion Forums

[guangho]

Okay so it is one thing to hire ESL teachers in New York City or L.A., but I keep seeing ads for places like Rochester, Minnesota; Cinncinnati, Ohio; and of course that immigrant bastion, Lilburn, Georgia. Honorable mentions go to Sharonville, Ohio and Provo, Utah-which by the way seeks a tenured college prof in ESL. Is this a temporary trend (maybe related to guest-workers) or something long term and having to do with demographic changes? I guess I wonder which immigrant group(s) dreamt up Jacksonville, Alabama and White Bear Lake, Minnesota as ideal stomping grounds.

[Henry_Cowell]

Read your history! Many thousands of refugees and other immigrants from mainland Southeast Asia have settled in Minnesota since the 1970s: Cambodians, Hmong, Lao, and Vietnamese. Members of their families still are arriving and settling in the U.S.

From the U.S. Census of 2000, here's the breakdown of largest Hmong populations in the 50 states:

1. California - 65,095
2. Minnesota - 41,800
3. Wisconsin - 33,791
4. North Carolina - 7,093
5. Michigan - 5,383
6. Colorado - 3,000
7. Oregon - 2,101
8. Georgia - 1,468
9. Washington - 1,294
10. Massachusetts - 1,127
11. Kansas - 1,004

[Tiger Beer]

[choctawmicmac]

In the immigrants' minds, the smaller towns where there are fewer of them around are indeed becoming the more desirable places to go. The problem is that in the previously most-popular immigrant havens, the US is stepping up the crackdown on illegal immigration. By now, we are at the point where most immigrants, legal or otherwise, want to flee the larger cities just to get away from being harrassed by Immigration on a regular basis. Even if you are legit, you wouldn't want to be in, say, Miami where Immigration raids your workplace on a regular basis, now would you?! That would be annoying at the very least.

Here in Canada it is at the provinces' discretion who to allow into the country and who to reject. The largest immigrant havens, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, are so chock-full of immigrants lately that it's hard to remember that Canada is one of the world's most sparsely populated countries! In B.C. the province now mandates that immigrants must be willing to live outside Vancouver, in the smaller cities like Prince George, and whatever else is outside of "Greater Vancouver." It's kind of a "force them to spread out" policy.

But in the US the immigrants are apparently spreading out on their own free will.

[VanKen]

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

Sometimes job ads are placed just because they HAVE to be placed for fair competition laws, when in fact the person who will do the job was never even in question.

[MELEE]

I've been away for a long time. But the last I heard, Iowa was advertising for immigrants because it did not have enough unskilled labour to fill the service industry jobs. With a high education level, youth move away to find professional jobs, and there aren't enough high school students to staff McDonald's, grocery stores, and office cleaning services, not to mention the meat packing plants which send their managers to Spanish classes in the evenings.

[Vanica]

Agricultural jobs in the US are located in far-flung locations and the work is done by Mexicans and Central Americans. They and their children attend ESL classes.

The recent housing boom in the Southeast seemed to be built by immigrant labour. I don't know what's going to happen now that the boom has gone bust. But the people and their children are there.

Some of them are going to New Orleans. The Recovery District is hiring ESL teachers virtually over the phone for the children of Spanish-speaking migrant labour who are rebuilding the city. The problem there is where to live, because of the housing shortage and high rents.

I saw several new Vietnamese supermarkets going up in Raleigh, NC.