The prejudices you might come across when looking for a job as an immigrant

Looking for a job is never easy, but it can be especially hard if you are an immigrant. Unfortunately you are going to come up against quite a few prejudices while you are looking for a job. How serious a problem this is will depend on things like where you immigrated from, how well you speak the language and what kind of job you are looking for.

There are quite a few different prejudices that you will come across if you are looking for a job as an immigrant. The most common is that you are taking a job away from an American. There are a lot of people who believe that no immigrants should be allowed into the country because they take jobs away from citizens. In most cases this is not true since most employment based visas are granted to people who fill jobs that can't be filled with an American. Nevertheless the belief is fairly widespread.

The other big prejudice that you are likely to come across is the belief that you are an illegal immigrant. This will largely depend on which nationality you are. If you are Hispanic you can be pretty certain that you will run into people who believe that you are an illegal immigrant. It won't matter that you have the paper work to prove that you are there legally you will still find people who believe it to be the case. This is a problem that will likely be more of an issue with your coworkers since your boss will have the paperwork that shows that you are there legally.

If you are of Middle Eastern descent when you go looking for a job in the United States you will likely find that a lot of people treat you like you are a potential terrorist. There are some people who will not even try to hide this belief. Others will make the assumption that you hate America and are out to destroy it. This really has little to with looking for a job since it is part of bigger prejudice but it is something that you will encounter.

Probably the most pervasive prejudice that you will come across when you look for work as an immigrant is the belief that you are an unskilled worker. In part this is an assumption based on the belief that most foreign countries have poor education systems. As a result it won't matter if you have a university degree and years of training. If that degree was earned outside of the US a lot of people are going to assume that it is substandard. There is a reason that you hear stories about immigrants with medical degrees driving taxis, it happens because of the belief that their training is not up to American standards.