A Job Fair Draws Veterans Who Now Do Financial Battle

BY KAREN KELLER, Star-Ledger

A year ago, 25-year-old Robert Garcia was risking his life to scout insurgents in Iraq. Now he’s out on the streets of New Jersey trying to find a job.

The Palisades Park resident was one of roughly 150 veterans yesterday who attended a job fair to help veterans link up with potential employers and to offer assistance in everything from writing a résumé to starting a business.

About 35 employers from the public and private sectors came to the New Jersey Institute of Technology Campus Center to offer a wide range of jobs. One job was intelligence analyst for the FBI. Another was dishwasher for a Hoboken restaurant that specializes in fondue.

The job fair was co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, the city of Newark and the G.I. Go Fund — a nonprofit in New Brunswick that was created in 2006 to help veterans make the transition to civilian life.

Last year the unemployment rate for those who had served in the military after September 2001 was 7.3 percent — higher than the rate for all veterans, 4.6 percent, according to 2008 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As the economy continues to crumble, veterans are struggling to find work, said Richard Mannes, employment coordinator for disabled veterans at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs office in Newark.

The homeless ranks of young veterans also are on the rise, said Bob Fletcher, a specialist in veteran job needs at Jersey City’s One-Stop Career Center, although he said there was no hard data on how many soldiers are without a residence.

"The economic crisis compounds the problem for vets coming back now," said Fletcher. Some of the jobs held by reservists and National Guardsmen before deployment may have disappeared, he said. It is even tougher in a down economy for younger veterans who do not have college degree or traditional job skills to find a job, said Fletcher.

Menendez said America has a responsibility to support its veterans.

"A grateful nation not only goes to a Veterans Day event, … we’d better look them in the eye when they come back and say we meant it when we said, ‘Welcome home,’" the senator said.

Newark Deputy Mayor Margarita Muniz said employers should treat a military career like a degree from Princeton or Harvard. Her brother died of cancer that may have been caused during his years in the military, she said later.

"Our men often come back broken," Muniz said.

Alexis Vasquez, 29, a veteran of the Iraq war, said he has been struggling financially for two years. He was attending the job fair with his partner, Evelyn Ramirez, who is also unemployed, and their 10-month-old daughter, Arianna.

Yesterday’s event was the fourth veterans job fair Vasquez had attended in two years, he said. Even though he didn’t have any luck at the others, he was out on the floor yesterday, handing out résumés to employers such as PSE&G.

Ramirez had met him in the library of Bergen County Community College when he was studying forensic science before his deployment to Iraq, she said, smiling as she remembered. He never completed his degree.

Veterans Affairs has been assisting the Englewood couple with their rent. "If it weren’t for the VA Hospital, we’d be homeless," Ramirez said.

When Robert Garcia was discharged in July after 27 months in Iraq on two tours, he said he was told to go on unemployment. But $2,300 a month wasn’t enough for a father of two to pay his bills, he said.

Now he’s working a job for the National Guard, but he said that job will end in June when thousands of soldiers return to New Jersey from a yearlong deployment to Iraq.

The job fair was also opened to family members so that relatives of New Jersey Army National Guardsmen in Iraq could start looking for work for them in advance of their homecoming this summer, said Jack Fanous, a director of G.I. Go Fund.

The nonprofit opened an office in Newark City Hall in November. Since then the office has fielded questions from roughly 300 veterans, Fanous said.

"There’s been a lot of financial needs, between eviction and falling back on gas and electric bills," he said. Newark is home to about 25,000 of the state’s 500,000 veterans, according to Fanous.

Several veterans said they felt honored to have a job fair tailored to them. Often, they said, their status as veterans is not considered by potential employers.

Newark resident James Sinclair, 40, who was accompanied at the fair by two of his sons, ages 3 and 6, said the unemployment office didn’t consider his service in Operation Desert Storm when he went there seeking help last month.

"The guys give you the same list as everyone else," Sinclair said.