I've had occasion to think a lot about job prospects for immigrants lately.
First because CIC has set the stage for the re-opening of the Foreign Skilled Worker category by publishing its new list of occupations under which they can apply - did you know that Canada is apparently facing a critical shortage of financial and investment analysts?
I was at a talk at UBC last week about the unexpected career paths of Chinese professional women after they'd immigrated to Canada.
The gist of it was that almost none of the women were able to find a position similar to the one she'd left in China and most had experienced a career downgrade, from professional to less skilled work.
Finally, there was a recent Province article about a 25-year-old refugee from Pakistan who was disappointed to find himself working at a fast food restaurant in Canada because he had been teaching IT courses in his homeland.
Immigrants' expectations have certainly changed over the years.
I remember reading 10 years or so ago about how we would all need to become our own "brands" - bundles of transferrable skills - and that everyone would be able to fit seamlessly into standardized roles wherever they find themselves, as interchangeable cogs in global enterprises.
But those neo-liberal assumptions (or is it neo-conservative - I always have trouble telling them apart) fail to take our inability to transcend our human limitations into account.
Immigrants used to expect to have to reinvent themselves as an inevitable consequence of starting a new life in a new country.
Completely uprooting ourselves to move to another place with a different language, culture and environment is the more profoundly unsettling change we can experience.
Everything we take for granted, right down to buying milk at the corner store - if they sell milk, is done differently.
Anyone who thinks they can leave their home in China or Pakistan or even Australia or the U.S. and "hit the ground running" in a new country is delusional.
We might get over the acute stage of culture shock in several months, but the aftershocks last for years, often hardening into attitudes and rationalizations we're not even aware of.
And that's only what's going on inside our heads, without even touching on how our new environment reacts to us.
At the UBC talk, I learned that the women in the study (and, by extension, immigrant professionals in general) were unable to seamlessly resume the careers they'd trained for because of the "systemic devaluation of their foreign credentials" and the requirement to be recertified in Canada - which was too difficult, apparently.
I don't believe that credentials should be automatically devalued just because they're foreign, but there are public policy and public safety issues at play as well.
It's why we certify certain professions in the first place. Is it really discriminatory to ask that a foreign-trained civil engineer demonstrate knowledge of Canadian building codes, materials, and constructions techniques?
Or that foreign-trained doctors and nurses demonstrate that their training is up to Canadian standards? I don't think it is, even if that throws a monkey wrench into immigrants' career plans.
I'm invested in immigration to Canada, for obvious reasons, but I never let clients convince themselves that coming to Canada is not going to profoundly change every aspect of their lives. To do otherwise would be incredibly irresponsible.
And as for the ubiquitous stories of immigrants with PhDs reduced to driving taxis in Canada...
I have a PhD. We're a dime a dozen. Get over it.
Dr. Joe Greenholtz is a regulated Canadian immigration consultant (RCIC) and a director of the Premier Canadian Immigration Co-op. He also sits on the Richmond Intercultural Advisory Committee. He can be reached at [email protected].
