Talent always welcome
If U.S. companies are to successfully compete on a global stage, we need to welcome talented immigrants who are pursuing their American dreams.
By Sharon Callahan ([email protected]), CEO, and Robin Shapiro ([email protected]), global president, TBWA\WorldHealth.
At 6:43PM on the evening of Tuesday, March 7th, the attorneys told us that Austin and John might have to leave the country in three months.
They had to explain the situation to us over and over, because we just couldn’t understand, or believe, what they were saying.
Austin Bald and John Carter are account executives at our agency, TBWA\WorldHealth. They both attended Boston University for four years and earned degrees in advertising. They both joined the agency as full-time employees last June after graduating. They are both exceptional young men, men of talent and character and energy who quickly became an integral part of our agency family and are adding considerably to what we have to offer to clients. They are close friends who live together in an apartment in Brooklyn. And they are foreign nationals, Austin from Canada and John from the United Kingdom.
In the past, when we wanted to hire and retain young people like Austin and John, we were able to use an immigration pathway called H1B premium processing. This enabled us to quickly apply for H1B visas for employees, visas that allow U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations – the “quickly” part being necessary because international students’ right to work in the United States runs out one year after they receive their degrees. We had done this a number of times in the past and had no reason to believe this time would be any different. Our attorneys were working with Austin and John on their applications when, on March 3, USCIS, the federal immigration authority, announced that H1B premium processing was being suspended. Which meant that Austin and John no longer had a pathway to stay in the country and work after their student visas were scheduled to expire in June. Fortunately both John and Austin subsequently made it through the H1B “lottery” and had their student visas extended for a few months. But the possibility still exists that their applications will be turned down, and they will be forced to leave the United States.
The suspension of H1B premium processing was a conscious policy choice, made by individuals who knew precisely what the impact of their choice would be – that talented young people like Austin and John who had come to the United States and built lives here would suddenly and unexpectedly discover that they might have to leave. The entire structure of H1B visa policy, which allows or rejects by the pure chance of a “lottery,” was also a conscious policy choice, made by individuals who knew what the impact of their choice would be. All the policymaking individuals responsible, we are sure, felt that they had adequate reasons for their choice.
We feel differently.
These two young men chose to follow their dreams by attending college in the United States. They chose to continue to do so after college by pursuing employment in healthcare advertising in New York City – surely the world’s greatest city for advertising professionals, as for many other careers. They chose to invest their considerable talents in America, and for us to invest in them. They chose to become a part of the social fabric of this agency and this nation, and we accepted them with enthusiasm. At every step along the way, they have done “the right thing” – everything they were supposed to do to continue to build a life here and maintain legal status. And now our nation’s response to this, our nation that was built to a large degree on the dreams and work ethic of immigrants, is to say, “Sorry, we’ve changed our minds, go home.”
That response is both unjust and bad policy. It is unjust because – well, that part is self-evident. And it is bad policy for two reasons: first, because other talented and potentially valuable individuals will observe what happened to these two and others like them and decide to pursue their dreams elsewhere; and second, in an economy that is becoming more “global” every day, any business that is to be successful must open its doors to people with other perspectives and backgrounds. If U.S. companies are to successfully compete on a global stage, we need those talented immigrants to pursue their American dreams. We need to encourage bright and highly motivated young people like Austin and John to bring their ideas and perspectives and talents here.
And do not think for a moment that your company or agency will escape being impacted by all the recent – and approaching – policy changes. All of us need to think globally today – it’s simply the nature of our business environment – and none of us can afford to limit ourselves to home-grown talent. But in so doing we will all inevitably cross paths with the changing immigration priorities of the U.S. federal government. For us it was this particular policy change; for you it may be the next, or the one after that. But make no mistake – if it is your wish to create a diverse and globally minded workforce, sooner or later you’ll have to face this issue and decide whether to accept it or to speak out.
When our agency was born through the merger of LLNS and Corbett last April, we knew that the culture we created as leaders of the new organization would, as much as anything, determine its success or failure. And so we decided to place our people, our employees, at the center of that new culture. To a non-businessperson that may sound silly or obvious; to a businessperson it may sound like a cliché, like buzz-talk. But given the intensely human and personal task that we take on for our clients, the task of communicating about health, we knew we had to have people who are personally invested in the organization for which they work, who feel that the organization is invested in them, who feel invested in the people around them. We also chose five core values on which to found the new business: get real, be honorable, do good, stay restless, and raise hell. Every choice that we make at TBWA\WorldHealth, every path we choose or don’t choose, whether for our clients or for ourselves, is to be based on those five values.
Of course plenty of businesses set admirable core values, or talk about the importance of culture. But suddenly and unexpectedly we have been presented with a great test of the authenticity of our efforts. Two members of this family we have created are being faced with the possibility of being pulled away against their will, for reasons we feel are both unjust and impolitic. It would be very easy, in our bottom line-focused world, to simply apologize to Austin and John, to talk about the unfairness of it all, and wish them luck in their future endeavors. But then all those words about people and culture and values would be just that, only words. We invited these two young men into our family, we invested ourselves in them just as they did in us, and we are responsible to them, as to all of the people at this agency. Their situation is a call to action for every one of those five core values that we created just over a year ago. If we are to live up to those values, to the commitment we’ve made to the people who are making this organization great, we must act.
So we intend to speak out. We cannot do otherwise. We intend to fight for Austin and John with every tool at our disposal. We intend to accommodate and support them in the challenges they may face in whatever ways are necessary – they will remain employees of this agency, members of this family, whether they are in this country or not. And we intend to harness all the creative skills on hand here at our agency to broadcast the message that talent of any background or nationality is always welcome at TBWA\WorldHealth, and should be equally welcome at any American business enterprise – that, in business as elsewhere, diversity is strength, determination and persistence are more important than background or national origin, and people who have invested their dreams and their talents in America deserve our nation’s investment in return. That message long predates our agency; it dates back to the very beginning of the American Republic and the principles on which that Republic was founded. It has made the American business community the most dynamic and innovative in the world, and the American economy the most powerful in the world. But sometimes the message bears repeating, and we intend to repeat it as loudly and as long as is necessary.
But there is only so much we can accomplish on our own. So we ask all of you to join us – our peers in healthcare communications, in advertising at large, in the entire business community. Any enterprise that might benefit from the talents or ideas or industry of immigrants – or might suffer from their loss – has a stake in this debate. And any one of you might at any moment get that same call that we received on March 7th. So join us, in your company’s interest, and in the interest of the nation which makes your company possible. Speak about this issue, tweet about it (#talentalwayswelcome), write about it, raise the visibility of the immigrants who bring so much vitality to our business, explain to the world at large why the loss of diverse global talent threatens our future, and our nation’s. Let’s together live up to the words of the poet Langston Hughes: “Let America be America again – the land that never has been yet – and yet must be.”
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American dreams
Austin Bald and John Carter are account executives at TBWA\WorldHealth.
JOHN: I was a rower back home. My high school in England, Abingdon, was a really big rowing school. So I rowed from 13 to 18 – and if you’re a top-string high school rower in England, you want to go to America. That’s the place to be; the standard here is just incredible. And I was fortunate enough to be accepted at Boston University.
AUSTIN: I was a rower too, back in high school in Toronto. It was a dream for a lot of athletes there to go to the United States for university because the sports programs here are just at another level. So I made that my personal goal – worked extra-hard, went on recruiting trips, really put myself out there for coaches, took the SAT multiple times. And eventually, at the last minute, I was accepted at Boston University.
JOHN: At BU I majored in advertising and was fortunate enough to get an internship at Corbett the summer after my junior year. Pharma advertising wasn’t something we were really exposed to in school; most of the classes are focused on consumer work. So I thought it would be a great opportunity to expand my horizons.
AUSTIN: As an international student, you have to find a company to sponsor you for work once you finish university if you want to stay in the United States. So that in itself was a whole other mission, where you have to go to a company, you have to sell yourself, show them you’re worth investing in, and you have to convince the company that they can take a leap of faith on you. Because we only have this one year of work permitted after university on our student visas.
JOHN: The summer internship at Corbett was a wonderful experience. I really enjoyed the work, and the company really invested in me. And at the end of the summer, they told me, “If this is something you really like, we want to bring you back when you graduate.”
AUSTIN: I was bussing to and from Boston to New York about 50 times for interviews. I would get here at 9:00 AM, would do three interviews back-to-back and leave at night. Or I’d travel down for just one interview, do the interview for an hour and then jump on the bus right back. It’s about a four-hour bus ride each way, so it was a big commitment to try to make this work. But just like I was when I was trying to get to the university in the States, I was really driven to come to New York and pretty relieved when it all worked out, when I got an offer from TBWA\WorldHealth.
JOHN: So we both started at TBWA\WorldHealth on June 13th, 2016.
AUSTIN: Coming out of college, you hope for a few things with your first job – that you have a strong mentor and supervisor who can show you the ropes and show you – guide you as a mentor. You want to have a lot of young people that you can bond with and joke around with to make work fun to come to every day. And you want to be at a company that invests in you, beyond just being an employee but invest to make you a better person. TBWA\WorldHealth has hit all of those. When I first came, I couldn’t have asked for a better supervisor and mentor. His name’s Jeff and he’s – it’s been incredible. He wants to see me succeed just as much as he wants to succeed himself and that passion has very much rubbed off on me.
JOHN: Through college I did a few internships where I got to try out different types of advertising. At one of them we did a campaign for Snapple, just trying to sell more drinks. Then I worked for a year for the Travis Roy Foundation, which was a complete 180 from that. The Travis Roy Foundation is a Boston charity that helps fund spinal cord research and support spinal cord injury survivors. That was something that really sparked my interest in health care advertising. And now I work on Gilead’s hepatitis C drug, which is making a cure possible for patients all around the world, and it’s – the output is so much more rewarding, knowing that it’s actually having an impact on people. It doesn’t seem as glamorous as making a Coca-Cola advert, but it’s much more satisfying on a day-to-day basis. Everyone at work understands that, which is why it’s so nice working with a team where everyone’s passionate about the work that we’re putting out and why we’re doing it rather than just doing it to make more money for the company. It’s a really satisfying and rewarding thing.
AUSTIN: Within the first two months I wanted to have a face-to-face conversation with every member of the leadership team. It was a lot easier than I thought because they make themselves available even to their most junior employees. They take time out of their day to make sure you’re developing well, that you’re achieving your goals, your career path is what you want it to be. That support from the leadership definitely is felt throughout the agency; they clearly want to invest in the culture that they’re building here.
JOHN: We’d really been working through this system for a whole year with the help of the agency to make sure that we would be ready to submit our H1B applications in April, and then hopefully get the visa to continue to work. Then, it’s a busy Friday afternoon and we get called into the office and they’re basically saying overnight the whole situation has changed with two weeks to go before the application goes in, and you’re probably going to have to leave the country. It came out of nowhere. We thought we’d done everything right. We thought we’d jumped through every legal hoop for the past two or three years to make sure we’d be in the right position, and then suddenly everything just changes overnight. It was just a shock.
AUSTIN: Going back to high school and you – when we set these goals, I want to get to the States, I want to, if I just put my head down, grind, work at it, work at being a better athlete, it will happen and that’s it. Then at university, the next goal was, okay, I need to get my grades up, I need to go and interview at some of the networking events, if I want to stay here in this country. So that means I’m going to do everything I can to put myself out there for people to see, for jobs, for recruiters, and we did it and it worked again and we ended up here at this great place that’s way better than I could’ve ever wished for and now …
JOHN: If we don’t get the visas, then I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve been in America for five years, my parents have moved several times since I’ve left five years ago so I don’t really have any base. I don’t have a home I can go back to. For the last few summers, we’ve stayed in America to be doing internships instead of going home, we stayed, put ourselves in this position. So if I go back, it’s going to be like starting from the absolute bottom of where we wanted to be, compared to a highly sought institution we work for, where we really feel like we’re succeeding.
AUSTIN: The United States is this hub of education and industry growth, it’s the pinnacle of where people want to be for a lot of different reasons in terms of business and culture. A lot of students come here from all over the world to experience that and live the American dream, to be a part of this bigger thing that just isn’t available anywhere else in the world. When you have students that come here and love it and get educated here and establish themselves as Americans and build their life here through university and internships to jobs, and then have that all of a sudden ripped away is – well, unfair isn’t even the right word to describe it because you’re destroying all the work and all the promises that I thought this country was about.
JOHN: I’ve had a social security number since I was a freshman. I worked on campus, I taught rowing, I was a part-time coach to American kids who wanted to try it out. Through the five years that we’ve been here, we’ve been actively involved in the community every day. Sometimes it can sound like as an international student coming over, you get in your little bubble on campus and you hang out with the other internationals and you do your four years and you leave. But that just – I don’t think that was the experience we had. We were very involved in the life of the community.
AUSTIN: It’s not like we’re coming here and not becoming active citizens or not contributing to the culture and the community. We’re coming in as driven, hardworking, young professionals who want to make a change, who want to get involved in the community, who are working and just really trying to make this country and this place special, and the reason why we came is because we know that’s possible.
JOHN: The frustrating thing is we feel like it’s been a mutually beneficial situation. Like we’ve been able to come and become a part of the bigger community and really jump in whether it’s internships or sports or anything, we feel like that we have really embedded our life into America, but also America has invested in us. We’ve gone through four years of really high level education that has been provided through an American university. We’ve done internships, we’ve worked for companies that we’ve been able to be a part of and they’ve invested in us.
AUSTIN: You come here at the beginning of freshman year at university and you’re coming to a whole new country, you’re this 18-year-old kid who is now just a completely different person. It’s been five years now and I look at this – my town back home and I look at where everyone is and it’s just – I’m so beyond removed that this is home. The person I was when I left five years ago is not the person I am now, and the person I am now is American, a New Yorker who considers this place and the people I work with here like my family.
JOHN: I’ve been here for five years, all my friends, my really close friends from college especially through sports, you make some really close bonds. People you want to have – you want to be close to for the rest of your life. Then coming in to a company that has really invested in you. The frustrating thing is it feels like we’re being taken away from our home. Maybe it’s hard for people to understand that, having had conversations with people. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter. You can go back to England. England’s a good country. Your family’s there.” But for me it feels like – I love my parents, I totally do, and I love my extended family, but America is my home now and all my friends are here, my home. Our apartment in Brooklyn is what I consider home rather than my family from back in England. The really saddening thing is that it literally feels like we’re being kicked out of our home.
