Life Science Professionals Uprooted by War Seek New Start and Jobs in San Diego
By Terri Somers
BIOCOM Communications Director
After fleeing Iraq where he was the top doctor at a government-funded hospital, working in a lower level job in a research lab or tackling marketing tasks for a San Diego biotechnology company seems like a promising fresh start for one new San Diego resident.
The 42-year-old man and his wife, also a medical professional, are some of the recent refugees who have settled in San Diego with the help of the nonprofit International Rescue Committee. Although they earned degrees from the top universities in their country, the husband and wife with impeccable English must find jobs to make ends meet and support their two teenage children while they study to take the US licensing exam for foreign physicians. The test is much like the grueling medical licensing boards they took about 20 years ago.
For years the couple tried to stay in their homeland, despite the war raging around them. Both the husband and wife knew their jobs at the hospital were more essential than ever. But every time they left their house, they feared they would not live to return. These are people who know what it is to see a cruise missile fly by, or to see a neighbor’s home blown up, said Judy A. Bernstein, a volunteer with the International Rescue Committee’s San Diego office. They had to take their children to school along a different route every day and were still shot at, Bernstein said. Meanwhile, with all the bombing the hospital could not keep pace with the sick and wounded entering its doors. So in 2006, the family fled Iraq and landed in Jordan. But Jordan allows refugees to stay only two years. The family’s next stop, with the help of the United Nations and IRC, was San Diego.
The couple is part of a wave of highly-educated and skilled professionals who have recently been allowed by the US government to enter the US, work and start along the path to become a citizen. Other refugees who recently wound up in San Diego include the former lead violinist with the Baghdad Orchestra and a veterinarian from the Congo, said Bernstein, who has volunteered in helping refugees from many war-torn countries resettle in San Diego. Bernstein is scrambling to try to find the right jobs for these refugees in an economy that has left many other highly-skilled people without work. She contacted BIOCOM in the hopes that the life sciences community in Southern California might give her leads to programs, people and companies that might help these recent immigrants resettle.
The IRC, where Bernstein volunteers, is a refugee resettlement and crisis organization started by Albert Einstein in 1933. Back then it saved many top artists and scientists from the holocaust.
In recent years, Bernstein has helped some of the so-called “Lost Boys of the Sudan” learn how to assimilate into American culture. As children as young as 5 or 6 years old, the African children were forced to flee their homes after their parents and siblings were killed and their villages burned in a long-fought civil war. With just the clothes on their back, and sometimes not even that, thousands of children made their way across the African desert to a Kenyan refugee camps. Several years later, some of these young refugees were relocated to other countries including the United States. Bernstein coached some of these Lost Boys on life here – how to shop, how to bank, not to wander the streets here alone at night, even though it seems so safe and inviting after the horrors that they had seen. She also helped them find jobs in grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, social agencies. She convinced some of the Lost Boys to write about what happened to them in Africa, the result of which is the gut-wrenching book, “They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky.”
Now Bernstein finds herself handling a much different caseload. These people, like the Sudanese, are also displaced by war. Many are from Iraq and a few are from Afghanistan. Once in the United States, the International Rescue Committee can give them only three months of assistance, which adds up to about $800 cash for each person to pay for housing, a bus pass and get language and job training and other necessities that will help them become settled here. There are a few other agencies and church-based groups that help, but not many, and all the groups are feeling the effects of the economy, she said. The struggling economy, and her lack of contacts or knowledge of the life sciences field, has also made it more difficult than usual for Bernstein to help the refugees find job leads.
One recent afternoon after searching the internet for four hours, she found BIOCOM. She sent an email explaining her quest and seeking just ideas.
“I’ve seen job listings but I don’t know the lingo, so I cannot tell if it is a job that someone I know would be qualified to fill,” she said later in an interview. “But I do know that there are all these wonderful biotech companies here. For these people, working in a research lab making $10 to $12 an hour would mean so much. And some people see this as a way for a fresh start, maybe to try something else,” she said. For instance, in Jordan, the cardiac surgeon got a job in a hospital purchasing department, selecting which equipment it should buy for its physicians.
Bernstein has learned through the years that the refugees also face fear and prejudice in the US. She is hoping that within the scientific community, as well as the service industries, there may be social and professional networking groups, whose members may speak the same native language and share the culture of the refugees. Perhaps there are professionals from the same area of the world, who have faced the same cultural challenges as these new refugees? If you’re out there and can help in any way with job leads or networking opportunities for these refugees, she’d like to hear from you by email at the IRC, JudyABernstein@aol.com.