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Canada and the World

        Current Events with a Canadian Perspective

 

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06 September 2011

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Immigrant Underemployment

 

Getting a job isn’t as easy as it used to be for immigrants; there are scores of stories of highly qualified

newcomers having to take menial jobs to survive

 

There is an imbalance between the demands of the labour market and the skill sets of immigrants.

 

More than a million people in Ontario don’t have a family doctor. The country as a whole is short about 3,000 general practitioners and our medical schools are turning out fewer than they used to.

 

According to the Fraser Institute, “With only 2.3 doctors per 1,000 people in 2006 (age-adjusted), Canada’s physician-to-population ratio ranked 26th out of 28 developed nations that maintain a universal access health care system.” The Vancouver-based think tank says the situation is only going to get worse.

 

Meanwhile, Ontario alone thinks there may be as many as 4,000 immigrant doctors in the province who are not practicing medicine.

 

They are kept out of their chosen profession because their knowledge and skill levels may not be up to Canada’s standards.

 

Foreign Qualifications not Recognized

The qualifications of many doctors trained overseas are not recognized by the College of Physicians and Surgeons until they complete a residency in Canada.

 

This is a two-year spell of instruction in a hospital setting. There are very few residency openings available to foreign-born doctors. So, we have people who could be helping to heal the sick and reduce wait times for treatment who are driving cabs and shoveling concrete.

 

Meanwhile The Vancouver Sun (September 22, 2006): “An estimated 3.6 million Canadians cannot find a family doctor, yet as many as 8,000 immigrants trained and licensed abroad as physicians are not allowed to practise in Canada.”

 

The newspaper goes on to explain that provincial colleges “won’t license a foreign doctor without a written job offer. Regional health authorities won’t offer a job to a foreign doctor without a licence.”

 

Foreign-trained engineers, teachers, and nurses are facing similar barriers. Lower down the education ladder, most other immigrants have to deal with the same problems. This is a dramatic change from the past.

 

Employment Prospects for Immigrants Change

For a long time, the story was a good one: immigrants arriving in Canada tended to earn more than Canadian-born workers and, over time, the gap grew wider.

 

One reason is that immigrants are likely to be motivated people; to pick up and leave your country of birth to live in a distant land demands drive and enthusiasm, characteristics that are usually well rewarded in the workplace.

 

Also, in the past, immigrants tended to have higher levels of education than the people already living here.

 

However, this has changed in recent years. According to a federal government report, immigrants in 1996 found it “substantially more difficult to secure jobs than did their predecessors in the 1980s.”

 

In 1986, the employment rate among recent male immigrants aged 25 to 44 was 81 percent. A decade later, this had dropped to 71 percent. And, the trend continues.

 

Statistics Canada surveyed 12,000 newly arrived immigrants in 2001 and 2002. The survey revealed that only 56 percent of those aged 25 to 44-prime working age-had been employed in at least one job. After two years in the country the employment number rose to 80 percent.

 

However, only a third of newcomers were able to find work in their chosen field. The biggest barrier to finding a job is “lack of Canadian experience.” Poor language skills and non-recognition of foreign qualifications also kept people in the unemployment lines.

 

Underemployed Skilled Workers

A story in the Calgary Herald in 2006 highlighted the plight of Sheikh Ahmed. He is a water and soil engineer from Pakistan who has 14 years experience conserving natural resources.

 

The only job he’s been able to find is at a gas station, for which he’s paid $8 an hour. According to the newspaper “His master’s degree is recognized by the University of Calgary, but he needs one year of experience to be licensed by the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta. ‘If no one will hire me, how will I get one year experience?’ said Ahmed.”

 

The experts seem to be baffled by the poor performance of recent immigrants. They say that newcomers in the 1990s and 2000s had better language skills and higher levels of education than those of the 1980s. These factors should have made it easier to find employment, but they didn’t.

 

What seems to be happening a lot is what’s happened to Sheikh Ahmed; recent immigrants are having to settle for jobs for which many are overqualified. The recently arrived, particularly women, are clustering in sales and service jobs. This includes such things as restaurant, hotel, and retail store work.

 

Bob Doran

 

Statistics Canada has found that at least one in four immigrants with a university degree is working in a job that demands no more than a high-school education. Among the general population, only one in eight Canadians is working at a job for which they are overqualified.

 

Cost of Underemployment

The Conference Board of Canada has studied this underemployment. The economic think-tank says it’s costly and puts an annual price tag of $3.4 billion on it. In other words, if all immigrants were fully employed up to their potential Canada would be better off by about $106 per person.

 

For the individual immigrant the cost is high. An architect from Iran, for example, might have to settle for delivering flyers. If that degree in architecture was recognized in Canada, its holder would command a professional salary in the range of $60,000 to $70,000.

 

Delivering flyers is a minimum wage job that will bring in an income way below the poverty line. The average gain in income that comes from recognizing an immigrant’s qualifications is between $8,000 and $12,000 a year.

 

The earning-power gap between immigrants and native-born Canadians is widening. In 2008, CBC News reported that, “In 1980, recent immigrant men earned 85 cents for every dollar of their Canadian-born counterparts. In 2005, that number plummeted to 63 cents. The drop was even more pronounced for immigrant women, who went from earning 85 cents by comparison in 1980 to only 56 cents in 2005.”

 

Word will quickly get back to immigrant source countries. Don’t apply to Canada, the letters home will say, you’ll have to take a menial job, live on next to nothing, and rely on the food bank. The educated and qualified immigrants Canada needs will start looking for places where they can work in their chosen professions.

 

Image credit

K. Nicholl

 

Sources

“Government Policies Restricting Medical Training Mean Canada’s Physician Shortage Will Worsen; Recruiting Foreign Doctors a Necessary Short-term Solution.” Fraser Institute, March 15, 2011.

“Kafka’s Canada Ignores Under-employed Foreign Doctors.” The Vancouver Sun, September 22, 2006.

“Recent Immigrants in the Workforce.” Jane Badets and Linda Howatson-Leo, Canadian Social Studies, Spring 1999.

“Provincial Labour Shortage Bewildering to Newcomers.” Calgary Herald, February 25, 2006.

“Big Jump in Wage Gap Between Immigrants, Canadian-born Workers: StatsCan.” CBC News, May 1, 2008.

 

© Canada and the World, September 2011

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The global consulting firm Watson Wyatt, estimates labour shortages in Canada will rise to more than  one million workers by 2016. The only way to solve that problem is through immigration.

 

IN DEMAND

 

Canada, Japan, and Mexico are facing the most acute labour shortages.

 

A survey of 33,000 employers by Monster.ca identified the top ten list of positions they are having the most difficulty filling. They are:

 

 

The natural growth of Canada’s population will not provide enough people to fill all jobs.

 

People Patterns Consulting says more immigrants will be needed to make up the shortfall: “By the year 2016, the annual rate of immigration that will be required could be as high as 650,000 per year.”

 

 

 

According to a 2006 Statistics Canada study, one in six young, highly educated male immigrants leaves

Canada within a year because of the poor job market.

 

MISLEADING ADVERTISING?

 

Selladurai Premakumaran trained in Britain as an accountant. His wife, Nesamalar, is a bookkeeper.

 

In 1998, they came to Canada in the professional skilled class. Mr. Premakumaran said Canadian officials assured them they would have no trouble finding work in their fields.

 

Five years later, the couple was cleaning offices in Edmonton in an effort to support themselves and their four children. They had not been able to find any work in the accounting field.

 

Disillusioned and angry they sued Ottawa for $2.1 million for mental anguish and relocation expenses. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2005.

 

 

 

According to a 2009 Statistics Canada study, the proportion of immigrants earning less than $10 an hour is 1.8 times higher than among Canadian-born workers.