by Sabirah Abdus-Sabur
With a distinct Scottish accent and a quick smile, Roxanne Aston has a humorous personality.
“You can call me Roxy,” she says with a laugh. Aston’s dark brown eyes occasionally divert, often mentioning what she observes of other people in the café while in the course of telling her own story.
On a recent Saturday morning, Aston is wearing a beige sweatshirt over khakis with her chestnut colored hair pulled back into a bun as she scours the internet for where to acquire a nursing license. Although she’s worked as a nurse in Scotland, she’s not considered qualified here because her license is not equivalent to U.S. standards. for practicing nursing in the U.S. Aston has looked into many schools, hoping to do a quick track to nursing, but most are not affordable for her.
“The cheapest I’ve found is to study nursing in the Caribbean,” Aston says. However, she has been weighing the decision because it means leaving her three teenage children in the United States for over a year to complete her studies.
Immigrants to North America may often discover that their license or certification earned in their home country does not match the standards in the United States or Canada. The New Immigrant Survey published in the journal Demography found that as many as 50% of immigrants’ initial job entry is a downgrade from his or her previous experienc
This sets these immigrants down a path to taking positions for which they are overqualified, and may not be within their field. Yet, research shows those who receive a downgrade are more motivated to ascend the occupational ladder.
After living in Edinburgh, Scotland where she had lived all her life, Aston split up with her husband two years ago and moved to New York City two years ago with her children. after separating from her husband.
“At first I just made the plunge.” Aston says with a shrug.“You know, to just settle my family in a new home. And it all worked well, thank God. It’s just the issue of the license which is the real hurdle to working in my field here.” says Aston.
Aston currently lives in Fort Greene Brooklyn sharing a home with her three children. Two of her children are currently attending college while also working. Her eldest daughter teaches kindergarten children while studying education at City College. Her son works as a sales representative at an electronic and software store, and her middle daughter is studying medicine at St. Francis College.
In the meantime, Aston works as a secretary at an accounting firm. Her climb up the ladder towards working in her field again will resume when she decides where she will obtain her nursing license.
She remains optimistic about reaching her goal despite the initial downgrade in her field because of the license incompatibility.
“I was certainly disappointed, but what else can I do except work towards getting the license?” she says.
Immigrants comprise 14% of U.S. workers. In Canada, immigrants with the highest match rate of receiving a job that matches their qualifications studied in English-speaking countries, the official language spoken by the majority of Canadians.
Seth Adebowale, 42, was a professor of African Politics at The University of Cape Coast in his native Ghana — but shortly after he came to the United States he found himself sweeping floors and disposing of overflowing trash bags as a janitor.
As Adebowale explains it, the schools he applied to for a professor position when he first came to the United States did not find his degree from Ghana equivalent for teaching.
“They wanted to recognize a degree of my studying here in the US for me to be able to do any teaching,” Adebowale says.
Although Adebowale holds a degree in teaching from the University of Education, Winneba these credentials did not match the requirements of a New York teaching degree, which also require him to hold a higher degree to be considered qualified to work at the schools where he applied.
It was necessary for Adebowale to obtain a master’s degree in a U.S. university. Yet the cost for studying for a master’s degree was more than he could afford while maintaining his livelihood.
So he found work as a janitor.
“It was completely different from the position I had, but what I’ve learned from my experiences is to remain humble,” he says.
It was a long, winding road back to academia before Adebowale achieved his current professor position. He worked for about two years as a janitor before taking a job as a taxi driver in the streets of New York.
“I would consider both positions to be solitary work but being a taxi driver was a bit more stressful,” Adebowale laughs. “I’d have to compete to get a rider. As a janitor nobody competes with you to pick up the trash.”
Adebowale presently is in a wheelchair because of osteoarthritis and has medical advice to stay off his feet for a few months. He looks forward to getting back on his feet and would rather only use his cane for assistance. Despite this condition he does not consider it a hindrance to his teaching.
At times, Adebowale admits, it was a bit depressing to see that he was off course from the position he really wanted and loved. He registered for evening classes at Hunter College toward teaching to put himself back on track. It was slow going at first, but after eight years, Adebowale received a position five years ago teaching about the political systems of Africa at Brooklyn College.
“It’s been more years than I would have expected just to be able to teach here in the U.S.,” he says.
Adebowale thinks there needs to be a clearer system that allows immigrants to see in advance if one’s license or certification is equivalent to another country’s to minimize the dilemma he faced in his qualifications.
In 2010 Canada implemented a framework that would help immigrants to assess their job certification equivalence.
Yet, there is not a singular system that allows an immigrant job seeker to learn if their certification matches with the U.S. Finding information on equivalency in the U.S. can be narrow based on the specific job. With the need for nurses, however, Aston looks on the whole situation in a positive light.
“There’s really not much else one can do, if you really love this country and find it worth being here then I guess you’ll do what it takes to achieve your goal here even if it takes years.”