Highline Community College gives immigrants an assist with job credentials

For more than 10 years — in private practice and later for the national government — Dr. Rayna Aguila cared for pregnant women and their unborn babies in her native El Salvador.

She counseled families struggling with domestic violence and tried to teach people — rich and poor — how to protect themselves against disease.

"My work involved every aspect of community care," she said in heavily accented English.

When she came to the U.S. nearly seven years ago, she'd hoped to work again as a health professional. But, unable to speak much English, Aguila ended up taking whatever job she could find to help support her family, including waiting tables and cashiering in grocery stores.

In April, she started down a path she hopes will enable her once again to use her medical training. She is among some 70 Puget Sound-area immigrants receiving guidance through a new program at Highline Community College that helps foreign-born and -educated health professionals navigate the state's credentialing process.

Their stories aren't unique. Across the country, doctors, dentists, scientists and engineers wash floors and drive taxicabs to make a living — unable to transcend the language barriers and credentialing rules needed to practice here in the United States.

A recent study by the Migration Policy Institute, an independent Washington, D.C.-based think tank, found more than 1.3 million such immigrants are doing unskilled jobs beneath their levels of education and training.

The Puget Sound Welcome Back Center at Highline helps them identify the additional training they need and how best to get it. It was planned in partnership with the California Welcome Back Initiative, which started in San Francisco in 2001 (www.e-welcomeback.org) and provides a model for this type of work, with centers now in four states.

"This is not a shortcut to get into the health profession," said Kris Mason, center director at Highline.

"It's a way to help immigrants ... get accurate and realistic information about what it's going to take for them to get a license to practice their professions here."

Most who have sought help through Highline's center are from such countries as Ethiopia, Ukraine, Iraq and Mexico. The most common profession: nursing.

Mason said getting medical professionals back on track will help address a need for linguistic diversity among providers of health care at a time when increasing numbers of those seeking services are immigrants.

In her report, Uneven Progress, Migration Policy Institute's Jeanne Batalova found that just over half of the 6.1 million immigrants who held at least a bachelor's degree in 2006 had received their education before coming to the U.S.

And one in four of them is working in an unskilled job.

"Our report challenges the notion that a college education automatically opens up doors of opportunity to everyone," Batalova said.

She said degrees from institutions in Western Europe, Canada and other English-speaking countries are looked upon more favorably than those from Asia, Eastern Europe or Africa.

"It's not stated overtly, but by practice there's the assumption that the other country's education training program might be inferior or not match standards in the U.S.," she said.

"An employer may not know what a degree from the University of Moldova means."

Extra challenges

Ismael Nana holds a master's degree in microbiology and another in biology from the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, his native country in West Africa.

Since arriving in the U.S. this past spring, the 30-year-old has applied online for hundreds of jobs in laboratories, hospitals and elsewhere. But job offers have not come, so he's working as a food server at an Old Country Buffet in Federal Way and teaching French to kids at a private school in Madrona.

His wife, who was trained as a physician in Burkina Faso, returned there this summer to complete some course work after being unable to find a job here.

"Right now I try to find a lab job," Nana said. "I don't want to have to start from the lowest level."

Professionals who need a license to practice — dentists, pharmacists, doctors — are required to pass the same tests, whether they were trained in the U.S. or overseas.

Many must also pass the so-called test of English as a Foreign Language (TOFL).

A further complication confronts those whose old careers do not translate neatly into one in the U.S.

For example, in some countries, the job of public or environmental health inspector might be considerably different from what it is in the U.S., and immigrants who want to pursue such a career here may find they need to start over.

For some foreign-trained doctors and dentists, restoring careers can be complicated, costly and long.

"Most of them have been in the country for over 10 years and not been in their professions," said Kao Saechao, educational case manager with the Welcome Back Center. "If you're in your late 40s, mid-50s, that makes returning to your career tough."

Adjusting dreams

Aguila, the El Salvadoran doctor, didn't consider her medical career over when she came to the U.S.

But "the economic situation was no good," she said. "I was caring for my children, taking ESL classes, and I had to work to help my family," she said.

Now, at age 49 and still trying to improve her English, she no longer thinks it's practical to pursue a medical practice here.

In April she enrolled in a Highline course in English for medical professionals and, after completing it, began a phlebotomy program. She is currently completing an externship and "next, I try to get job in lab or a hospital," she said.

"Maybe I can study nutrition. I would like to return to my home country and say to my former classmates: I'm a nutritionist."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com