Research and Reports
WES conducts original research on trends in student and immigrant mobility, economic inclusion, and factors that affect the ability of immigrant and refugees to successfully integrate into the workforce. We also regularly publish reports, white papers, fact sheets, and policy recommendations based on decades of knowledge and experience.

2024 End-of-Year Policy Review
| United States
This brief explores 2024 policy reforms addressing U.S. workforce shortages by expanding access to education, licensure, and credential recognition for immigrants and refugees.

Fostering Inclusive Pathways into the Health Care Workforce
| United States
This report is about effective strategies for addressing healthcare workforce shortages by promoting immigrant and refugee inclusion, highlighting successful approaches and real-world examples from organizations like African Bridge Network and the International Medical Graduates Academy through the SIIP Demonstration project.

The Fund at 5: Insights and Impact from Five Years in the Field
| Canada
This report shares the progress made in the last five years, highlighting the impact of the Fund’s grantee partners and the lessons learned in building a trust-based philanthropy that seeks to advance inclusive workplaces and communities, equitable economies, and opportunities for all.

Bolstering Pathways to Practice: Empowering Internationally Educated Nurses in Canada
| Canada
This report shares our findings, detailing the barriers to licensure faced by IENs and outlining eight actionable recommendations to bolster pathways to practice and foster a more inclusive and robust health care system in Canada.

Community Asset Mapping To Support Internationally Trained Immigrants and Refugees
| United States
This resource explains how community asset mapping can help organizations identify and mobilize the strengths within their communities. It offers a detailed guide to identifying assets, enabling better use of existing resources, addressing service gaps, and fostering collaboration.

Amplifying the Impact: Bridging the Gap for New Americans
| United States
WES offers these recommendations to our federal partners as part of our shared commitment to helping create a resilient and healthy economy that provides mutual benefit for individual New Americans and whole communities alike.

Group Mentoring for Immigrant and Refugee Professionals
| United States
Discover twelve steps to launching a successful group mentoring program for immigrants and refugees. These programs offer employers new ways to tap into hard-to-access talent pools, while providing job seekers an effective way to enhance networks and build the knowledge and soft skills they need to achieve their career goals.

How Community Colleges Can Support Internationally Trained Immigrants and Refugees
| United States
This guide provides actionable advice that community colleges can implement to help immigrant and refugees overcome common barriers to obtaining employment. Such barriers include credential recognition issues, limited professional networks, language gaps, and more. The guide also features examples of community colleges that have successfully implemented a range of approaches to support this population.

Counting on Care: A Survey of Internationally Educated Nurses Not Working as Nurses in Ontario
| Canada
This report describes the registration status, employment outcomes, and nursing skills utilization for 758 IENs not currently working as nurses in Ontario. The findings in this report add to the existing data landscape on IENs in Ontario and contribute to ongoing research into the state of its health care workforce.

2023 State Policy Review: Strengthening Workforces Through Immigrant and Refugee Inclusion
| United States
This report reviews state-level policy reforms enacted in 2023 to advance more equitable educational and workforce opportunities and outlines inclusive measures that state policymakers can promote during 2024 state legislative sessions and beyond.

How States Can Address the Nursing Shortage: Advancing Opportunities for Internationally Trained Nurses
| United States
Policymakers can open pathways for internationally trained nurses to rejoin their careers by standardizing and streamlining four key areas: English language proficiency assessment, credential evaluation, licensure by endorsement, and alternative pathways to licensure.

Advancing Immigrant Inclusion: A Practical Guide to Obtaining Federal and State Funding to Pay for Credential Evaluations
| United States
A credential evaluation report is an important part of an internationally educated individuals’ ability to make full use of their skills and training in the U.S. States and local communities across the country have developed methods of directing existing federal and state funding to finance credential evaluations for their internationally educated immigrant and refugee residents. […]