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| Subject: Foreign work not respected, Stats Canada says |
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Link: http://immigration.assad.ca/forum/index.php?topic=28.0
By ERIN ANDERSSEN
Tuesday, May 18, 2004 - Page A8
News: Globalmail
New immigrants coming from places such as Asia and Africa can scratch foreign work experience off their r?sum?s when job hunting in Canada, be it months or decades, a new study has found -- it´s all worthless in the Canadian labour market.
Statistics Canada says that zero return for foreign work experience is a key reason for the plummeting earnings of new Canadians, who can expect to earn about one quarter less today during their first year in the country than those who arrived 30 years ago.
While the source countries for skilled immigrants to Canada have shifted dramatically in that time -- to Asia and Africa from Western Europe and the United States -- the report shows that the country is doing an increasingly poor job of giving value to those skills.
The numbers write a darker ending on the immigrant success story that Canadians like to tell. Jeffrey Reitz, a leading immigration researcher at the University of Toronto, observes that much of the public and political support for the country´s immigration policy rests on the understanding that skilled foreigners fuel the economy, not that they stall once they get here.
"This represents a very significant problem for Canadian immigration," Dr. Reitz said. "If immigrants had been earning this amount of money back in the 1970s, I don´t think you´d see support for immigration as high as it is today."
The Statscan report suggests new immigrants may be experiencing the same decline in first-year earnings that has been found among young Canadians entering the labour market compared with their counterparts decades ago. But the study also found differences between the earning power of immigrant men arriving from places such as Britain and the United States and that of the mass of skilled newcomers now coming from countries such as China and India. In the past 30 years, immigrants from Western countries have seen the value of their foreign university degrees jump, and return on their foreign work histories decline only slightly. In 1969, the Statscan report said, these immigrants saw a 2-per-cent increase in first-year Canadian earnings for each year of foreign experience -- that number was down to 1.8 per cent in 1999.
By comparison, the trend for immigrants from non-Western countries has been the opposite -- possibly, although not solely, Statscan suggests, because technological advances in those countries have not kept pace with Canada: in 1969, each additional year of foreign work experience earned them an extra 1 per cent in earnings their first year in Canada; in 1999, that foreign experience was worth essentially zero.
At the same time, the rate of return for foreign degrees among Asian, African and Eastern European immigrants has held steady relative to their counterparts coming with high-school diplomas. But this isn´t good news either: In 30 years, the earning gap between Canadian-born citizens with high-school diplomas and those with university degrees has widened to a chasm. The numbers mean Asian and African immigrants haven´t seen the same benefit -- instead they show that the issue of recognizing foreign credentials, particularly for immigrants coming from predominantly non-white countries, is neither a new problem nor one that Canada has made significant strides in resolving.
This is the real brain drain, said Li Zong, who has conducted several nationwide surveys -- not the skilled workers coming and going to and from Canada, but the wasted ones already here.
[19-05-2004,18:45]
Chaudry |
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(in reply to: Foreign work not respected, Stats Canada says)
Good article Chaudry,
DR. Roman Piatek
[24-05-2004,04:43]
Roman Piatek |
Not entirely true (in reply to: Foreign work not respected, Stats Canada says)
I have had foreign experience (mix of working in Asia and America) and its the only thing that landed me a job. So I think the statistics though portrays some truth must not be taken as a yardstick in trying for a job in Canada.
Thanks
[01-06-2004,19:25]
Observer |
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