A PhD in applied mathematics works in a laundry; someone with an MS in chemistry has been transformed into a nurse’s assistant; a lawyer has retrained to become a nanny. Is this why specialists the world over came to the New World?

According to data from the Migration Policy Institute, close to one million immigrants in the United States with higher education and permission to work in the country have not found work that meets their qualifications. Twenty-three percent of American residents who received a bachelor's degree in their home country earn less than $19,800. Only 7.6 percent of native-born Americans with the same level of education have settled for this income.

“My diploma is just a piece of paper. Who needs it? I don't have an American education, nor work experience,” Svetlana, who moved here from the Ukraine, brushed off my suggestion to look for work in her profession as pharmacist. She chose the path of least resistance and enrolled in secretarial courses.

“More than 50 percent of immigrants are convinced of the uselessness of their education and previous work experience. They don't even suspect that the problem is not with them, but with the American system,” explains Jane Lu, the founder and executive director of Upwardly Global (UpGlo), a nonprofit organization whose goal is to unmask stereotypes and help immigrants find decent work.

Jane was brought to the United States from Germany, and she is one of the first in her family to receive a diploma from an American college. During her college summer vacations, Jane worked as a housekeeper to pay for her studies on her own. This forced her to value her education even more. Subsequently, she found work in a government agency that helps refugees. It was here that she ran into the problem immigrants have finding work. Arriving in this country, people with academic degrees in various subjects are hired only for unskilled work. Statistics confirm this situation. According to data from the Migration Policy Institute, 50 percent of immigrants have jobs at significantly lower-level, than they had in their homeland.

A Russian engineer works as a garbage man, a Nepali journalist as a nanny, a Bangladeshi doctor as a taxi driver. Everyone has many similar examples to add to this list. But not everyone knows that these immigrants are the victims of a large and unfair employment system. “Professionals in this situation think that they are the problem, berate themselves, and are concerned about a lack of work experience in America. They don’t even guess that they have fallen into the system’s trap,” Jane said.

Through her work, in 2000 Lu became acquainted with two refugees, workers at a New York poultry factory. The factory owner was very proud of them and even promoted them to management. One of them was a doctor from Bosnia and the other an engineer from Iraq.

“The owner of the poultry factory praised his subordinates and admired their intelligence and sagacity, and I was horrified thinking about these two highly-qualified specialists cutting up chickens. That’s success in a new country for you!” Lu remembers.

This turned her life around. Working from her kitchen in New York, Jane started to teach immigrants with higher education and permission to work in the country communication skills for job interviews. She left the agency and looked for funds to start a nonprofit organization, which could help immigrants find jobs that meet their qualifications. This is how UpGlo emerged.

The organization is financed by private funds and corporate partners and also receives donations. Staff and volunteers at UpGlo teach immigrants how to write a resume and how to carry an interview. They organize tours of potential employers and introduce them to specialists with American work experience in the same field. As well, UpGlo tries to change the system for finding employment in its partner companies. It teaches them not to be afraid to hire specialists with foreign work experience and points to the many advantages of such hires.

Today, UpGlo has two offices: one in San Francisco and the other in New York. The latter opened only two years ago, but has already helped more than 100 immigrants assert themselves in their new country. It recently announced 180 Degrees, a campaign with which UpGlo intends to collect more than $180,000, which will go toward turning around the lives of 180 immigrants by 180 degrees.

“One-hundred-eighty degrees is when a salesperson in a store earning $10 per hour finds a job in information technology that befits his qualifications and has a $50,000 salary. This is when an Indonesian refugee who has become a cook in America has the opportunity to use his pre-emigrant education as a librarian," explains UpGlo's press release.