About 350 asylum seekers will attend classes at the Community College of Denver over the next six months to learn skills that will help them enter the workforce. Those classes will run as part of a program dubbed WorkReady Denver.
Denver has seen more than 42,000 immigrants arrive from the southern border since December 2022. The city had mainly been focused on the immediate response to the vast number of immigrants arriving via bus, such as opening shelters and making resources available. However, the frequency of arrivals has slowed in recent months, allowing Denver Human Services to recalibrate and focus on long-term housing, workforce training, rent and food assistance.
Part of that new strategy is WorkReady Denver, which launched Thursday. City officials and educators welcomed several hundred asylum seekers to the Auraria campus for their first day of classes through the program.
“This group's only path toward federal work authorization is to apply for asylum, wait five months, then apply for work authorization, and then receive it,” said Jon Ewing, a spokesperson for Denver Human Services. “So it's a six-month program built around those federal guidelines. And so for the six months, we're helping with housing, we're helping with food, we're helping with transportation.”
Only people applying for asylum are eligible for the program. People in the program must also agree to complete 20 hours of training a week. Those who participate are also given laptops and cell phones provided by AT&T and the city.
Michel Lugo worked as a stylist in Venezuela but came to Denver with her four children to seek asylum. She relished the opportunity afforded to her.
“The responsibility is mine, not theirs,” Lugo said in her native Spanish. “They are giving me an opportunity and support so I can move forward. It is my responsibility to move forward to be able to have a good and stable job in the future.”
Centro de los Trabajadores, a Denver group that supports day laborers, built the curriculum and is administering the program.
Classes will be a mix of online or in-person at Community College of Denver and Centro San Juan Diego, a ministry under the Archdiocese of Denver. The program is split into two halves. For the first half, asylum seekers will take English, digital literacy and worker rights classes. They will also learn soft skills to help newly arrived immigrants assimilate into American work culture.
For the second half, those in the program will get industry-specific training.
“Construction, caregiving, and hospitality are some of them, but we're going to be open to other industries if they are willing to be in collaboration with us to open spots for them,” said Mayra Juarez-Denis, Executive Director of Centro de los Trabajadores.
City officials and Centro de los Trabajadores have already identified and contacted potential workplaces for those who graduate from the program. They expect at least 70 percent of WorkReady participants will take a full-time job that pays over $20 an hour after the program ends.
