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Show HN: Who is hiring refugees? Or, hacking visas to help refugees

59 points by whoishiring ↗ HN
I built http://www.hirerefugees.org to connect refugees with work visas for safe countries and employers who want to help.

Hiring a refugee is a rare chance to change – and possibly save – someone’s life. You can do it for about the same cost as hiring whomever you would have hired otherwise. It may be one of the most efficient ways to make the world better.

The Syrian civil war as created the world’s greatest refugee crisis. There has been fighting in every major city for years. Over 160,000 people have been killed since the beginning on the conflict. Over 9 million people have been displaced.

Fortunately, many Syrians are qualified to work abroad because they are well educated and speak English or other foreign languages. Working abroad can transform the lives of refugees who would otherwise live in the midst of an unending armed conflict or live indefinitely in refugee camp tent cities.

There are visa programs suitable for young people and experienced professionals:

- Au pair visas are available in the US, Europe and South Africa for young people, 18 to 30 years old, who are proficient in English or some European languages.

- The US has an intern visa program for English-speaking university students or recent graduates.

- The US also has a visa program for "trainees" who have a university degree in their field and two years of experience or five years of experience.

- Refugees who are certified to teach and speak English qualify for a visa to teach in the United States.

- Of course, there are visa programs for experienced professionals in many countries.

It is important to note that civilized countries generally don’t force people to return to dangerous war zones.

You can see refugee job seekers here: http://www.hirerefugees.org/candidates/search?occupation=None&language=None

If you would like help with the process of acquiring a visa for a refugee, please contact me at matthew.walsh-cloonagh@hirerefugees.org

12 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 39.2 ms ] thread
johnnyg
My mid-sized business does not support visas.

I look at it as something so hard and complex that only the Googles and Amazons of the world can play.

Are there resources or professionals in the HN community that lay out the process and the costs?

_p6xs
The J1 visa for interns (current or former students) [1] and trainees (graduates with 2+ years of experience or others with 5+ years of experience) [2] is a very low overhead visa (just one form) and not subject to caps. So, it is very different from the H1B.

If you decide to hire a refugee on a J1 visas, I would be glad to help you sort it out. Please contact me at [email redacted].

The maximum duration for these visas is 18 months, but the Obama administration may reauthorize "Temporary Protected Status" [3] for Syrian nationals allowing them to stay in the country until it was deemed safe to return (which may be a decade away).

[1] http://j1visa.state.gov/programs/intern [2] http://j1visa.state.gov/programs/trainee [3] http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status...

lambda
Nice idea!

Some of your icons aren't showing up for me on Firefox, as FontAwesome is being loaded from a different domain without CORS enabled:

  Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote 
  resource at
  http://support.hirerefugees.org/plugins/font-awesome/font/fontawesome-webfont.woff?v=3.2.1. 
  This can be fixed by moving the resource to the same domain or enabling CORS. 
  downloadable font: download failed (font-family: "FontAwesome" style:normal 
  weight:normal stretch:normal src index:1): bad URI or cross-site access not 
  allowed
  source: http://support.hirerefugees.org/plugins/font-awesome/font/fontawesome-webfont.woff?v=3.2.1 font-awesome.css
There's a ticket for this on GitHub that describes how to fix the problem: https://github.com/cdnjs/cdnjs/issues/755
_p6xs
I'll fix that. Thanks!
gregcrv
My girlfriend sponsored a refugee from Darfur. His name is Guy. He's on a student visa and he is currently a student at the College of Lake County just outside of Chicago, Illinois. She is constantly fund-raising his life because he is not allowed to work. The website looks amazing ! I'll show her tonight and will come back to you for more feedback. Thank you !

More info about Guy: https://www.facebook.com/RefugeeSupport https://fundly.com/help-a-darfuri-refugee-study-in-the-us

PauloManrique
On the website, it says Brazil requires a contract with employer to get a work visa. That's not the way it works. Basically, whenever a refugee enters Brazil, the government give him a place to sleep, 3 meals each day and he get not only a visa, but a document called "Carteira de Trabalho", or "Work document" which allow him to work here.

Basically, any refugee can just enter in Brazil, get the documents and start looking for work, and yes, we need workers badly.

_p6xs
This is interesting. Can you point me to documentation about this program?
PauloManrique
I couldn't find documentation regard this. Recently there's a huge wave of people from Haiti entering Brazil ilegally, but the government support then giving food and documents.

Regarding Syria, I found this article:

http://www.unhcr.org/524555689.html

christophernjy
I'd wish someone would look into LGBT refugees as well and not just from war zones. Transgendered from Russia are having an insanely hard time living there.
janbernhart
Great initiative. In Amsterdam we can arrange visa quite quick and easy, i'll post our jobs and spread the words.