Highline Community College gives immigrants an assist with job credentials

More than 1.3 million immigrants are working here at unskilled jobs, yet were highly trained and educated in their native countries. This college is helping some of them to update their credentials. We need every one of them working in their professions, especially since many of them were nurses and doctors. DP

Immigrant doctors driving taxicabs or dentists working in construction can get help through a new center at Highline Community College that provides guidance to foreign-trained health-care professionals trying to get their careers back on track.

By Lornet Turnbull, Seattle Times staff reporter

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.
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