Fri Nov 12th @ 12.30 PDT: Harnessing Hardships (An Online Discussion)
An Immigrant's Guide to Health and Power
Sending this week’s letter a bit earlier because I would like to invite you to an important virtual discussion on Friday Nov 15th @ 12.30 pm Pacific about harnessing hardships as immigrants when exposed to toxic relationships and workplaces. Register here to join us.
If you join us you’ll hear about:
Four different stories of immigrants and how we have turned adversity into strength and hardships into health
Better perspectives on why we drive ourselves into burnout, and where that comes from
Evidence based tactics on how to tackle the problem of ‘toxic productivity’ at its roots. Also - wtf does that come from? We’ll unpack it.
Ways to measure your environment and understand whether the stress is external or not.
Why am I doing these webinars, you ask?
As I venture forth into the 12th year of living as an immigrant in this strange and beautiful world, I am finding deep purpose in connecting with other people who have left everything behind and worked their way up, only to find that security is but a mere illusion in America.
My purpose hit me all of a sudden this week.
In Search of Gumption is my documentation of my struggles as an immigrant.
The Human Dash members whom I support are 100% immigrants.
My shortlisted book Health Humans, Sick Society, is about how to stay healthy in the modern world.
It all makes so much sense now..this immigrant thread ties my whole life together.
I wrote about my experience in getting laid off earlier and it was by far my most popular post, and then started to talk about it on LinkedIn more and announced the webinar about immigrants I am hosting on Friday…
And the response has been incredible….
I am receiving so many stories from people who have been cut out from their jobs, laid off without warning, thrown under the bus after giving their all..
He doesn’t live in the past. Is there anything more definitive of an immigrant’s experience than that statement?
I didn’t live in the past either when I found myself laid off after creating my company’s first health data product after years of pushing for resources, pitching leadership, working overtime without compensation. Once my product was making millions and I thought I that “I had made it”, I was laid off and a few months later the company was acquired by Accenture.
There are many such stories that are now flooding my inbox.
And it doesn’t stop there…
Highly-skilled Immigrants make up a quarter of all STEM positions and about a half of the patents and founders of $1B+ companies in the US
and yet...
- Layoffs affect HB-1 visa holders the most, with women being about 45% (which is huge considering that they only represent ~20% of STEM workers)
- Thousands of skilled migrants with H-1B visas working as subcontractors at well-known corporations like Disney, FedEx, Google, and others appear to have been underpaid by at least $95 million
- Older immigrant skilled workers in Silicon Valley are let go of for younger cheaper labor, needing to appear younger to stay competitive (as in they get plastic surgery to stay employable!)
And what do we get in return? Free yoga? A smelly meditation room? Sparkling water with lemon and ice?
So what can we do about this?
Short answer is I don’t know but I am ready to figure it out.
The first thought is that we can do better than to try to figure out alone.
and so…