By Tim Klass, Special to JTNews
Faces from East Africa, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe focus intently on Danielle Wallace as she guides them through a workbook section on pay stubs.
She asks the students in an English as a Second Language class, who appear to range in age from their mid-20s to their 50s, how much federal tax has been withheld.
In a halting accent that could be Russian or Ukrainian, a middle-aged woman says, “72 dollars and, ah, 92 cents?”
“That’s right,” Wallace coaxes. “Where do you see it?”
In a nearby room at the Jewish Family Service offices near Crossroads Mall in Bellevue, Mitra Zarakani talks with obvious delight about helping recent immigrants and refugees such as these find work, even as she fears for her own job future.
She is one of five JFS employment specialists. The others are at a larger JFS office in Kent. All could lose their jobs under a state budget proposed by Gov. Chris Gregoire to close a $4.1 billion projected shortfall in the two years starting July 1, 2011.
“It’s really bad. It’s not good. I’m sorry for that to happen, especially for the people who are just coming,” Zarakani said. “They have a bad life, and they think [before arriving] that the United States is just a heaven for them.”
Besides seeking to eliminate the state’s Disability Lifeline for disabled people who are unemployable ($327.3 million), Basic Health Plan (66,000 indigent residents, $232 million), and Children’s Health Program (27,000 youngsters, including some who may be in the country illegally, $59 million), Gregoire would eliminate all $10 million for refugee employment services in the Department of Social and Health Services budget.
That could wipe out all $454,250 in government funds JFS receives for employment assistance known as Limited English Pathway, the largest program in staff and revenue for the agency’s Refugee and Immigration Service Centers. RISC accounts for more than $1.3 million of JFS’s $8 million annual budget, second only to social services, and its LEP program is the fourth largest in Washington State.
As much as JFS would like to reverse the LEP cut, RISC director Shane Rock said, “I think the chances are not particularly good.”
Rock said the program also stands to lose $22,320 from United Way for employment services, bringing total losses to about 5.7 percent in the total JFS budget after July 1.
JFS’ Chief Operating Officer Claudia Berman said there would be no impact on plans to break ground on its 19,000-square-foot, $9 million building at headquarters on Capitol Hill in Seattle. She said money could not be taken from other budgets within JFS for the RISC program, leaving LEP at risk of closure.
“I think it’s pretty disastrous,” she said.
The employment program ducked a pair of bullets earlier. Operating under contract, LEP had enough cushion to absorb a state-ordered 15 percent reduction, from $521,000 to $454,250, effective Dec. 1, 2010, without losing staff or cutting service, Rock said. Another reprieve came two weeks later when Gregoire and the Legislature spared LEP from further cuts in the current biennium, which runs through June 30.
Under the LEP contract, JFS gets $1,800 for each arriving refugee or immigrant and is required to spend $1,100 on direct support such as food and rent, leaving $700 for administrative costs — chiefly the employment specialists.
Rock said the program could retain as much as $180,000 in federal funds from the $454,250 on the state’s chopping block for fiscal 2012-2014 — unless the state directs that money instead to WorkSource, which provides general employment and training services.
For immigrants and refugees, WorkSource employment workers rely on interpreters, while the five JFS job placement specialists are fluent in Arabic, Burmese, Farsi, Russian, Thai, Ukranian and various Somali dialects, covering all the languages spoken by most of their clients, Rock said.
Like most RISC staff, Zarakani is an immigrant. A member of the Baha’i faith, she fled from religious persecution in Noshar, Iran, with her husband and their two sons and arrived in the U.S. two and a half years ago. She is currently studying for an associate degree in interior design at Bellevue College.
Her face clouds briefly at the thought that her job at JFS could end in July.
“I am ready to start any job,” she said. “It was like a dream for me to come here.”
In fiscal 2010, LEP saw 530 clients and placed 110 in jobs at a median wage of $10 to $12 an hour, and 82 were still employed after 90 days.
Overall, programs in RISC provide assistance for up to five years, after which clients are eligible for U.S. citizenship. Last year, Rock said, JFS received 180 new immigrants, an 80 percent increase.
Partly because of the LEP cuts, “we’re going to level off this year,” he said. “You can’t morally and ethically bring people to this area if you can’t put them to work.”
Ironically, the flow of Jewish refugees largely concluded in 2007 with the arrival of the last group from the former Soviet Union, Rock said.
JFS and the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, based in New York, which also provides some assistance to the RISC program, have since been eager to work with other types of refugees, Rock said.
“We’re trying to grow our capacity because it’s the right thing to do,” he said, “and in case it’s ever needed for the Jewish community.”