Chicago Job Fair Offers 400 Jobs for Migrants as Native Black Population Suffers Rising Unemployment

Jennifer Franco, left, director of marketing admissions at St. Albert the Great Catholic S
Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Warner Todd Huston

Migrants were treated to a job fair in Chicago where employers were looking to offer about 400 of them jobs. Meanwhile, unemployment for city residents continues to trend upward.

The job fair was held on November 2 at the Chicago area Misericordia Home on the city’s north side where nearly 500 refugees from Venezuela, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Ukraine showed up to be courted for potential employment.

With interpreters provided for them, the migrants met with representatives in fields including health care, manufacturing, hospitality, logistics, and others.

The companies also offered help securing government services, legal papers, and even training and educational opportunities.

One of the organizers of the job fair was a migrant from Afghanistan.

Siam Pasarly, the co-founder of Kaar Poh Staffing Agency, told Chicago’s WGN-TV that he hopes to help immigrants avoid the struggles he went through when he first came to Chicago.

“It is very difficult, it is very tough. Until you experience it, you just don’t know,” he exclaimed.

Meanwhile, even as other sectors in the city have recovered, black unemployment in the Windy City is still bad.

According to Crains Chicago Business, the black unemployment rate is 10.9 percent in Illinois, more than three times higher than white unemployment at 3.4 percent.

In Chicago, it is worse as the “jobless rate rose from 43.7% to 57.4% between 2019 and 2021 for Black people ages 20 to 24 in Chicago. The unemployment rate increase for Black women aged 20-24 was staggering, rising from 32% in 2019 to 60% in 2021,” the business paper noted in June.

By August, national unemployment was at 3.7 percent, but for black Americans in Chicago it was 14.3 percent, WTTW-TV reported.

This is one of the many problems that is riling the city’s black population against the rapidly growing number of migrants in the Windy City.

The influx of illegal aliens has many activists for Chicago’s black community worried and angry. In September, left-wing Chicago Catholic priest Father Michael Pfleger said that fast-tracking work permits for illegal immigrants would put jobs for his black flock at risk.

“What are we putting in place to make sure that there are no institutions in this city, this state, and country that will fire Black people because they have to pay them $15 or $16 an hour and then hire a migrant and pay them $5 an hour? What are we putting in place?” he asked.

In another case, Chicago activist Zoey Lee, who appeared at a Chicago City Council meeting, voiced a growing sentiment among black Chicagoans, accusing city leaders of trying to start a “race war” between black Americans and Hispanics.

“To come here and continue to see more Hispanics and Latinos get jobs than blacks here is a disrespect,” she added. “It’s a punch in the face.”

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