This is a pretty awful way to treat people who come to immigrate, and I was wondering what people think should be done about this?

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

If we're just going to stick people in cabs and retail and chambermaid jobs when they get here, then why are we robbing countries of their doctors and lawyers and other professionals?

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Originally posted by Michelle:
I think we should do away with the point system and make it a lottery system instead.

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If we're just going to stick people in cabs and retail and chambermaid jobs when they get here, then why are we robbing countries of their doctors and lawyers and other professionals?

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Of course, foreign credentials SHOULD be recognized, don't get me wrong.

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1. Foreign credential are recognized, in some of the fields you mention, such as medical, they just have to pay a small fortune to live, study for and write the Canadian and provincial standards exams. Most have spent all they have coming here. Those that have the money, can take the exams and get official recognition/designation, in fairly short order.

Moreover, those that can't afford it immediately and take too long to save what they need, almost have to start from scratch if they are too long away from their field of practise. The theory being if you don't use it you lose it, and the field has moved on in the meantime.

2. With immigrating lawyers, there is studying for the laws of the new land in which you reside and for the province that you reside in. Qualifying for bar exams does not come cheap.

3. There is no standardization of certain educational certificates/degrees across Canada, let alone across the globe. We have some standardization of pre-requistes with certain countries, but definitely not all, or even a lot.

A few years ago, I was part of a team, that was seeking and recruiting Drs to stem the shortfall, here in BC, there were only a handful of countries where we could seek them from, so that those arriving could be put into a position immediately.

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
I think we should do away with the point system and make it a lottery system instead.

If we're just going to stick people in cabs and retail and chambermaid jobs when they get here, then why are we robbing countries of their doctors and lawyers and other professionals?

Of course, foreign credentials SHOULD be recognized, don't get me wrong. But this system we have of only accepting people into Canada if they're completely educated and trained etc. is ridiculous. Clearly there is just as much need in Canada for unskilled labour as there is for trades and professions. So why not make it first-come-first-serve and get a mixture of backgrounds?

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Originally posted by remind:
1. Foreign credential are recognized, in some of the fields you mention, such as medical, they just have to pay a small fortune to live, study for and write the Canadian and provincial standards exams. Most have spent all they have coming here. Those that have the money, can take the exams and get official recognition/designation, in fairly short order.

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That's the sort of thing that I complain about when I say that for the last ten years or more the government keeps playing games with immigrants re foreign credentials.

On paper, credentials are recognized, and the really cruel part about all this is that immigrants are often lied to and not told that in fact... well, see below.

In practice, recognition is only haphazardly automatic and is often hedged and minefielded with little sneak attacks like having to spend a fortune to write an equivalency exam one has to study for on one's own time and presumably can only be written during normal working hours.

I refuse to believe anything Harper flaps his lips about as far as credential recognition goes because his pals the Liberals didn't do SFA about it either.

[ 12 September 2008: Message edited by: DrConway ]

My experience with the group trying to recruit interationally here in BC, actually was where I came to the realiztion that it is more about emptying 3rd world countries of their intellectuals and professionals than it is about immigration and qualitifications. And Canada of course is not the only country on the world doing this.

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
I read one article on how businesses don't like immigrants in general. The problems with the language, the third world business practices and the lack of experience with the latest equipment make them a second choise in the competition for a specific job. So certification is just one problem.

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I was wondering when your classic anti-immigrant position would show itself, bruce.

Some reasons why Canada needs immigrants:

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The Canadian population is aging

Between 1956 and 2006, the median age of the Canadian population went from 27.2 to 38.8 years, a gain of more than 10 years over a span of fifty years. By 2056, the median age is expected to reach 46.9 years, or 20 years more than it was in 1956.

A historic reversal: proportionally more seniors than children toward 2015

In 2006, 17% of Canada’s population consisted of young people under 15 years of age, 69% of persons aged 15 to 64 years, and 13% of persons aged 65 years and over. The most recent population projections show that toward the middle of the 2010 decade, the proportion of elderly might exceed the proportion of children, a historic first. Owing to population aging, and especially the arrival of baby-boomers at age 65, the proportion of elderly could reach double that of children toward the middle of the twenty-first century.

Over the next fifty years, it is also expected that the group consisting of persons aged 15 to 64 years (potential workers) will represent a proportion of the Canadian population similar to what it was in the early 1960s, in the range of 60%. This is ten percentage points below the current level.

Drop in the number of working-age persons per elderly person

By the start of the next decade, people old enough to leave the labour market will outnumber those old enough to join it

The working-age population is aging

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Some fun facts of the reality of Canada:

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Ethnocultural diversity

In 2017, more than one Canadian in five might be foreign-born

Strong immigration to Canada in recent decades has led to a rise in the number of foreign-born persons and the portion of the population that they represent. Thus, from 1986 to 2006, the immigrant population went from 3.9 million to 6.2 million, accounting for respectively 15.6% and 19.8.% of the Canadian population.

If current immigration trends were to continue in the coming years, the proportion of immigrants in Canada could reach slightly over 22% by 2017. This would be equal to the highest level observed since the beginning of the last century, namely the 22% recorded between 1911 and 1931.
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In 2017, approximately 20% of the Canadian population might belong to a visible minority group

Primarily because of sustained immigration and the low percentage of Europeans among newcomers, the visible minority population in Canada has soared in the past two decades. Between 1981 and 2001, the number of persons belonging to a visible minority group almost quadrupled, from 1.1 million to approximately 4.0 million. This growth, much faster than that of the rest of the population, boosted the proportion of the population that visible minorities represent from less than 5% in 1981 to more than 13% in 2001.

Under the reference scenario of the most recent projections of visible minorities, this increase will continue in the coming years, with the result that in 2017, the visible minority population would reach 7.1 million, representing approximately one Canadian in five.

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My idea is to have a lottery but to target it at relatives of current immigrants in cities that are at full employment.

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I have thought about immmigration for 17 years now and discovered economists are almost mute on the topic. I have a certain amount of publicity and immigrants that are here like my ideas.

Bigcitygal is glib somedays. Once she posted she's in favour of mass die offs. You know carefully worded statements are more memorable, will be remembered for life.

[ 13 September 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

[ 13 September 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Originally posted by Le Téléspectateur:

My idea is to get "Canadians" to understand that they are no more entitled to live here than anyone else from the rest of the world. Maybe that lottery can be expanded to include those who were born in Canada too. If you don't win a spot every year you have to move to another part of the world. Sounds absurd when the systems of oppression that we apply to "non-Canadians" are directed at "us", eh?

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bruce: If you have fair wages at the bottom you can have more immigration, but that day is sometime off

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What is that, "trickle-up" economic theory? Because "trickle down" worked so fabulously?

bruce, did you read the stats I posted in one of my non-glib moments? Just on an "economic" basis, the population of Canada is aging, not "reproducing itself" and will not be able to sustain the current workforce, or even a reduced one as trends continue. (Those items are in quotes because I don't believe the systems of capitalism and consumerism they support are sustainable, but this is the most common argument in favour of immigration)

If there isn't more immigration then the social network, what's left of it, will not be viable. Even the most rabid conservative politician knows this, not that they'd admit it to their constituents.

Low wages should firm in a tight labour market. Not a lot but significantly. This is what has happened traditionally, has happened in the developing Tiger economies and in Alberta currently. It's well reported that Tim Horton's has trouble finding staff in Alberta and that's all I'm an saying.

Essentally, the government is saying "we'll accept you, all right, but on our terms, not yours, and you'll just have to live with it."

It's time to go or get off the pot; the government should either open immigration up, or just not have it. Either stance would be more logically sound and more principled than the lying weaselly system we have today that gives immigrants false hope when they land on our shores. (even if a lot of us would argue that having no immigration at all is against basic humanitarian principles, please recognize that banning immigration altogether is at least a more honest statement of intent and belief)

[ 13 September 2008: Message edited by: DrConway ]

[ 13 September 2008: Message edited by: DrConway ]

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The community people live in is the modern state. It's a community and people take care of one another. In Canada there's education, health care and welfare. There's 6.7 billion people in the world and we are in competition with them. Support your community - they support you and yours.

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Every Canadian knows they're blessed to be living here and not there. We are all aware of this. This country is 200 years ahead of the third world. Our forefathers built Canada and it happens to be our birthright to enjoy it.

And, if you haven't noticed, the state is our community. The nation state, or what ever we have in Canada. It nurtures and supports us. In days or yore the church did that but the church is now subsidized by the state. Before there were churches there were tribes. Very oddly even though Canada is 33 million it acts like one big tribe and celebrates this at election time. Yeah, it's nationalism - and in Canada understated as a style.

[ 13 September 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

Conservative nanny statists recommend Darwinian global competition among unskilled and semi-skilled workers, iow's the large majority earning the lowest wages. The ten percent base of higher paid professional workers need protecting from global competition in order to maintain the narrow base of supporters who vote for two old line conservative politcal parties monoplizing power in the U.S. and Canada. Protections for these workers plus obsolete electoral systems are synergistic in preventing an outbreak of true democracy in North America, the last bastion of political conservatism in the western world. Of course, as Baker points out, people aren't supposed to notice that such protections exist. Highly paid family physicians here(compared to Europe) and university professors and other professionals help drive up the cost of health care and education, but are by no means the largest and only reasons for the current shortage of doctors in Canada, or the skyrocketing two-tiered pricing scheme for higher education.

Baker said, that in the U.S.:

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If free trade in physicians brought doctors’ salaries down to European levels, the savings would be close to $100,000 per doctor, approximately $80 billion a year. This is 10 times as large as standard estimates of the gains from NAFTA.

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[ 13 September 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by mahmud:
What strikes me most is that such decades-long unfairness -like many other instances of blatant unfairness- never garnered enough outrage from the ms media and the electorate/citizenry to bring about change.

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The situation of professional immigrants not getting good jobs is widely reported and widely known. People are generally aware of it. It's true it hasn't caused a change in policy.

Now this is not to say Canada is not among the most immigrant friendly country on this planet; it is; however an immigrant who is spending lots of money and many years of his/her life on the immigration process, is at least entitled to receive the full picture before applying: That his foreign job experience would not count much; that his degrees may not get certified here etc. Saying that the applicant should find this information on his own just does not cut it.

I remember once I was interviewing a gentleman in his 40s who had applied to our company for a low-level technician job. He had a graduate degree in managing water resources, and had worked for 20 years as a UN specialist. But he simply could not find any job here. Another time the applicant was an aerospace engineer from Ukraine with more than ten years of experience in rocket design. He was also applying for an electronic technician job. I could not hire either one as they were way overqualified.

What I would like to see is to replace the skilled worker class with temporary worker class, more or less similar to the Australian system. Work with the industry to identify the specialities in need, and help the industry hire foreign workers on 3-year work visas. At the end of the 3rd year, give the workers the option to become landed immigrants. Apply the same program for foreign students who graduate from Canadian universities. In this way, the neew immigrants have already settled into Canadian society and job market and can stand on their own feet.

There were some positive changes in the immigration process in the past couple of years (by both Liberal and Conservative governments) along the above lines. It needs more re-focusing of the program on immigrant settlement, than just accepting the best and the brightest.

[ 14 September 2008: Message edited by: sanizadeh ]

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
I think hewer and drawer is our lot. In fact it pays well. Miners are amongst the highest paid workers. I don't entirely get your complaint that this is the way it is - we aren't the USA or the EU.

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In fact, Canada has natural resource wealth that is unparalleled in the world. We only have 33 million people to provide jobs for, and our colonial administrators have done a piss poor job of that for a long time. Canada is a repository of natural resource wealth for corporate America to raid at will. We've been ripped off on the oil and gas for a long time. Too many children living anywhere below an obscure poverty line to rate as a top social democracy, never mind in the top ten most competitive economies in the world.

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:

However there are lots of educated Canadians that aren't working in their field as well. Probably everyone has stories about people they know. That's sort of the labour market currently.

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Yes there are. But statistically this line of thinking is hardly sustainable. Besides, it brings to mind the "counter-argument" we face when we condemn abuse of women by men: "There are women who abuse men".

Anyway, what Canada needs is a planned economy.

[ 15 September 2008: Message edited by: mahmud ]

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However there are lots of educated Canadians that aren't working in their field as well

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Originally posted by sanizadeh:

What I would like to see is to replace the skilled worker class with temporary worker class, more or less similar to the Australian system. Work with the industry to identify the specialities in need, and help the industry hire foreign workers on 3-year work visas.

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This is what the Conservatives have done. They have a temporary workers program that admits about 100,000 a year. They have specialties identified which they describe as an official "opinion" on shortages. Currently it includes construction workers, heavy equipment mechanics, doctors and nurses and a few others catagories. I'm not familiar with the details.

[ 15 September 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Originally posted by mahmud:

Anyway, what Canada needs is a planned economy.

[ 15 September 2008: Message edited by: mahmud ]

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I don't know how old you are mahmud but I lived through the Cold War. The USSR had a "planned" economy but it didn't work particularly. Even though the Communists controlled everything and generally did not allow dissent the central planners were reported as saying outright planning didn't work.

[ 16 September 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:

I don't know how old you are mahmud but I lived through the Cold War. The USSR had a "planned" economy but it didn't work particularly.

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
Lots of references to "Capitalism" around here. In fact the term for our system is the "mixed economy", in Canada 40% by government.

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