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Amazon, PepsiCo and others pledge jobs and trainings for refugees

Tech companies have promised to hire 20,000 refugees. Nearly 200,000 refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine alone have been admitted in the U.S. within the last year.

Amazon logo

Amazon said it would hire 5,000 refugees in the next three years.

Image: Yender Gonzalez/Unsplash

Leading U.S. companies including Amazon, Pfizer and PepsiCo have pledged to hire 20,000 refugees over the next three years.

The commitment was made at a summit organized by the Tent Partnership for Refugees, which was founded in 2016 by Hamdi Ulukaya, CEO of Chobani. The announcement comes at a time when the U.S. government expects to welcome more Ukrainian refugees as the war with Russia continues, with several thousand who fled from the Taliban in Afghanistan already in the country.

Amazon said it would hire 5,000 refugees in the next three years, the largest commitment among the 45 companies that pledged. PepsiCo and Pfizer will each hire 500 refugees.

“Being displaced from your homeland and having to start again somewhere is never easy,” Janet Saura, vice president of employee relations, WW Amazon Stores and Corporate, said. “Which is why we are committed to helping where we can, by providing refugees and other displaced people with access to meaningful employment.”

LinkedIn and Coursera pledged to work with refugee support agencies to offer training and networking for 6,000 and 7,500 refugees, respectively, so that they can find jobs in the U.S.

In 2021, Uber, Mastercard and Facebook made commitments to hire 95,000 Afghan refugees. That plan initially faced some hurdles, including the uncertain status of the Afghan people airlifted to U.S. bases around the world and a government bureaucracy gutted by the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies.

Although significant, the commitments pale in comparison to the number of refugees already in the U.S., with more set to arrive. Nearly 90,000 Afghans have been resettled in the U.S., and in July, the Department of Homeland Security said 100,000 Ukrainians had been admitted in the country in the five months since the invasion and war with Russia began.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the month in which DHS said 100,000 Ukrainians had been admitted. This story was updated on Sept. 20, 2022.

Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu

Kwasi (kway-see) is a fellow at Protocol with an interest in tech policy and climate. Previously, he covered global religion news at the Associated Press in New York. Before that, he was a freelance journalist based out of Accra, Ghana, covering social justice, health, and environment stories. His reporting has been published in The New York Times, Quartz, CNN, The Guardian, and Public Radio International. He can be reached at kasiedu@protocol.com.

refugeesamazonpfizerpepsicoukraineafghanistanimmigration
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