Ivan came to American at the age of 15 from St. Petersburg, Russia. He is now 47 years old, has a family, and works as a freelance computer programmer. Here, Ivan commented on how his parents found their first jobs in America and how he was hired to work fresh out of college (translated partly from Russian):
First, my dad was a laborer and my mother was a clerk. Then he got a job as a engineer. The Jewish non-for-profit organization NYANA helped my parents, they worked with many immigrants. [When I was graduating from college] there was recruitment after college and I was offered a job with IBM. I had to leave NYC and move upstate. After that I started freelancing and changed companies many times.”
