The Lottery Effect
How lack of information, coordination and poor funding leave newcomers to the U.S. guessing where to turn for the support they need
By Tiziana Rinaldi
Since the White House announced plans in early May to accept up to 62,500 refugees in the 2021 fiscal year, there has been renewed speculation about stepping up admissions. The shift signals a return to more welcoming policies after the previous administration’s notorious aversion to immigrants, especially those who, like the asylum-seekers now surging to the southern border, are pursuing humanitarian relief.
Less is being said, however, about efforts on the ground to help these people make the most of themselves after they arrive.
Tanzilya Oren, an Uzbekistan-born doctoral candidate in Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service, is an expert on the subject and says there is plenty of room for improvement. A recent study she co-authored on New York City’s refugee integration apparatus, tells of a maze of decentralized services, lack of national coordination and the complicating factor of limited funding.
Oren calls it “the lottery effect,” quoting a term popular among resettlement policy academics*. “Refugees in New York City struggle to access accurate information and quality programs,” she says via Zoom.
In a system where available resources depend so much on which agency resettles refugees, as well as their receiving locality, any two families with the same characteristics can end up either as winners or losers depending on what services they get, she says.
Oren’s assessment is based on her personal background, her experience serving this population at RIFNYC.org, a local nonprofit, and her scholarly work. With fellow researchers Dr. Karolina Lucasiewicz, who led the project, and Saumya Tripathi, she recently published, “Local welfare system response to refugees: between innovations, efficiency, and creating unequal opportunities.” The article appeared in Routledge’s Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, in March.
Since The JobUp focuses not only on helping immigrants reboot their professional lives in New York, but also on understanding the underpinnings of the country’s noninvolvement toward their integration, Oren’s research presented an opportunity for inquiry.
The interview transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. When not specified, the term refugee(s) includes asylum-seeker(s).
Can you explain what is the “lottery effect” and why you called it this?
There is a lot of demand for quality integration services, from English-language classes to employment orientation to other supports for immigrants and refugees.
Unfortunately, not all newcomers who need those programs can find them. These services are generally in short supply or hard to access. For example, there are language barriers, a lack of centralized information, and irregular funding coming from a patchwork of sources ranging from public agencies to private foundations.
So, for a typical refugee, finding the right services to support both immediate and long-term needs of socio-professional integration feels like playing the lottery.
Could you share some specific examples of the limitations in the current state of affairs?
For example, there are no English-language training standards. Public libraries, various nonprofit organizations and also government-run adult educational centers offer language classes. But there is no standardized way to issue level-based certificates acceptable by both colleges and employers, across the board.
Also, many English-language classes are taught by volunteers. Most free ones are simple, and there’s no funding for professional-level English-language instruction. It isn’t easy finding higher-grade, good-quality and convenient courses for those who strive for professional jobs. The same goes for affordable legal counseling and employment guidance.
It doesn’t help that service providers compete for the same funding sources. It seems there is no incentive for them to share information about other places to help immigrants and refugees find the most appropriate services for them.
Your research centered on New York City. What’s the situation in the rest of New York State?
New York City is dense with various immigrant service providers, though mostly disconnected from one another. Outside the city, there are fewer services available and I cannot say much, as we did not interview or research outside New York City.
[Welcoming America, a national nonprofit that helps communities make immigrants feel at home, covered the disparities in the resettlement landscape across the U.S. in a webinar held on May 27. Experts discussed how the *lottery effect exists nationwide.]
An aspect of your study that confirmed previous reporting by The JobUp is the lack of a structured, federal integration policy for immigrants — especially asylum-seekers, you say. Having a socio-professional integration system would make sense, but we don’t. Why is that?
The U.S. has always had a laissez-faire approach to immigrant integration, leaving it to market forces, specifically the labor market, to absorb them. [Read here why this approach fails and produces instead immigrant brain waste.]
In general, newcomers do not receive support for living expenses while they are trying either to learn English or get a comprehensive orientation to better employment opportunities. Resettled refugees receive a minimum support package, the goal of which is to get them into any job as soon as possible.
The American “self-sufficiency” doctrine of minimum reliance on government assistance pushes them into minimum-wage jobs because there’s no time to either go back to school or re-enter a professional field.
Asylum-seekers don’t receive even this minimum support. They get a temporary work authorization six months after applying for asylum, but it can take up to a year to prepare an asylum claim. During that whole time, they have no support at all.
What would it take to improve the current system?
There have been attempts to develop a federal integration policy with funding from unclaimed Social Security money, for example, as was proposed by the Obama administration.
Broadly speaking, continued advocacy, working with employers, expanding immigrant coalitions focused on enhancing integration, and involving refugees in these efforts could help promote the importance of a coordinated national system. That could look like having universal standards of service, centralized information, as well as funding for profession-specific English-language classes, scholarships, good legal services, and comprehensive integration orientation.
In the U.S., immigrant support falls under the general welfare state, which is not generous to anyone and is influenced by racist ideologies and laws.
How far are we from that goal?
The recent expansion of the child-tax credit by the Biden administration is a huge breakthrough, since it expands the federal government’s role in social welfare provision. So, there is hope as we witness a positive turn that extends to refugees and other immigrants.
But the U.S. could spend more on par with other rich countries to integrate its immigrants. [e.g., Canada, the E.U.]
What else did you find out about the current state of immigrant integration services in New York City?
In the research I co-authored, we talk about social innovations that cities like New York are good at. Nonprofits and city governments engage in a lot of experimentation, developing new initiatives for newcomers. For example, New York City introduced a municipal ID card for all New Yorkers, including immigrants regardless of their legal status.
But clever local innovations could proliferate with better coordination at the federal level, with cities and states serving as social “laboratories of democracy,” to quote a famous concept popularized by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.
In immigrant integration, if the field was better funded, and successful programs were amplified, they would elevate motivated refugees to earn higher salaries, escape the low-wage trap and contribute more to the economy.
I do not see anything good in a reality where children of immigrants and refugees say how their parents had to work several jobs and sacrifice everything to support the family and send them to college. It just means that those parents had their vast potential go to waste.
