Welcoming Center gets $1 million grant to expand job preparation for immigrants
The Welcoming Center became a statewide model for other immigrant programs, its president said, because its goals were found to be fundamental to the success of both immigrants and their new communities.
It’s been 21 years since the Welcoming Center opened in Philadelphia, and the nonprofit that aids local immigrants in all kinds of ways has had some glittering successes. None have been more impressive than Saturday’s announcement of a $1 million legislative grant from the state.
With that money, the largest single contribution ever to the Welcoming Center, the Center City-based group announced plans to share its popular programs and services — and lessons learned from its many successes — with other immigrant organizations across Pennsylvania. On Saturday, at its offices on North 13th Street, Anuj Gupta, the center’s president and chief executive officer, hosted State Sens. Sharif Street and Nikil Saval, and State Rep. Joseph Hohenstein as they celebrated another achievement at the Welcoming Center and explained their enthusiasm for the grant.
“We need to celebrate the fact that our immigration, and our diversity, and the ways of new people are not taking jobs away,” Street said after an earlier celebration of 35 people graduating from the Welcoming Center’s community leadership program. “They are, in fact, increasing our economy, and creating better lives and more jobs for themselves and for others.”
Saval, whose parents emigrated from India, said: “Our city has emerged as a hub for major global talent. This is the work that the Welcoming Center upholds every day, and this investment from our commonwealth expands their capacity to serve more new Philadelphians and collaborate with statewide partners to expand their work across Pennsylvania.”
The announcement came as immigrants and their supporters are experiencing a general anxiety about Donald Trump’s impending presidency, and Saval noted that the current political landscape was “so uncertain.” But Hohenstein said: “The American dream is alive and well. … The United States of America is less about geography and more about the ideas of opportunity and freedom.”
The leadership program, one of a half dozen main projects featured at the Welcoming Center, is one of the three to be shared statewide first because of its importance to the immediate success of the other programs. “We give our participants the skills and confidence and the wherewithal to say, ‘We don’t have to wait for future generations to become leaders in our communities. We can take the onus. We can take the reins ourselves,’” Gupta said.
» READ MORE: The Welcoming Center's International Professionals Program helps new arrivals move toward jobs in their expertise
Programs on workforce development and entrepreneurship will also be shared first. Workforce development teaches job-search skills and digital literacy, and focuses on directing experienced immigrants toward jobs in their area of expertise. Entrepreneurship classes show how to build business plans and scale operations to maximize growth.
The Welcoming Center became a statewide model for other immigrant programs, Gupta said, because its goals and “action projects” were found to be fundamental to the success of both immigrants and their new communities. Gupta calls it an “equation of mutual benefit” and said, “We are allowing talent and determination to languish when we don’t give them those pathways.”
So far, Gupta has consulted with groups in Chester and Montgomery Counties, Scranton, and Williamsport about adopting the Welcoming Center model. Many immigrants have relocated to Chester and Montgomery Counties over the last 20 years, while Scranton and Williamsport are seeking immigrants and their talents to offset a shrinking younger generation of residents and taxpayers.
“Where are we going to find the talent?” Gupta said of maintaining communities in small towns. “It’s that simple. We’re talking about a survival of communities.”
Eventually, a program on intercultural wellness and blueprints for an immigrant-owned marketplace may be circulated around the state. The Inquirer featured the center’s International Professionals Program in a 2023 story, and Gupta said then: “Any employer that is interested in growth, their pathway is going to come through immigrant talent. We can become the pipeline to help fuel that growth.”
All this is especially important to Philadelphia, Gupta said, because it has one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in the country. He said a recent study from Pennsylvania State University indicates that Philadelphia’s growth to 1.8 million people by 2050 will be led by immigrants. In 2000, he said, less than 6% of the city’s population was foreign born. Now it’s 16%.
Anne O’Callaghan, an Irish immigrant, founded the Pennsylvania Immigrant Resource Center in 2003 after she became aware of Gupta’s research on immigration in 2000 as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. “She bust down doors that were shut,” Gupta said. “No one wanted to talk about immigration back then, other than [former City Council member and mayor] Jim Kenney.”
The center became the Welcoming Center a few years later, grew its staff to 27 full- and part-timers, and has served, according to its records, more than 17,000 people from more than 150 countries. It hopes to move to its own building with an immigrant-owned marketplace on the ground floor in 2027.
“Our approach is entirely about helping immigrants to realize pathways to economic opportunity,” Gupta said, “because that is the essence of why they’re coming to this country in the first place.”