Building Community Partnerships to Serve Immigrant Workers

As the U.S. population ages and baby-boomers retire, the U.S. will fall short of 5 million workers by 2020.

Immigrants and their children are expected to fill the gap of skilled workers and account for a majority of the workforce growth over the next 20 years, but many immigrant workers do not possess the skills necessary to perform these jobs. The “Building Community Partnerships to Serve Immigrant Workers” (BCPIW) initiative was designed to replicate and expand effective community college partnerships to address the workforce development needs of immigrants and immigrant workers. Common barriers for immigrants include lack of literacy skills, limited knowledge of potential career pathways and limited perspective of the benefits afforded by comprehensive training and education. This National Council on Workforce Education report examines the first year of implementation of the BCPIW initiative in eight community partnerships: four community colleges partnered with worker centers and four community colleges partnered with community-based organizations. The report found that the partnerships succeeded in building programs and services that moved from "one-off" quick training programs to programs embedded in career pathways leading to family-wage jobs for immigrant workers and day laborers. (Crystal Ye for The Immigrant Learning Center Public Education Institute)

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