Mebbe we should push this to the 2 ton mark!
BKB

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Get what you want by helping others get what they want

Quote:

---

Orginally posted by crenshaw
80%!!! Don't know where you could have got a number like that from.

---

Quote:

---

- Do you have statistics of power outages in B'lore?

---

Quote:

---

- Do you have statistics on traffic for B'lore, how long do people spend in a commute from home to the office?

---

Quote:

---

A very large number of immigrants (I won't hazard a guess as to the percentage) do find work in their own professions! I imagine its difficult to find information about Indians to this effect in view of lack of information by race (don't pick up on this now and suggest that its all a conspiracy).

---

Quote:

---

If we could do it, I'm sure a lot of other people can too......with the right information, and the right attitude, not by assuming that 80% of professionals work at Tim Horton's here.

---

Quote:

---

Just to put a perspective on this, approx 20,000 odd Indians immigrated to Canada during 2003. If we go by your numbers, we would have 16,000 new Indians at Tim Horton's, McD, etc. Sounds illogical?

---

Skilled immigrants face quagmire over jobs

Emily Bowers
Times Colonist


Sunday, February 23, 2003

They came to B.C. from countries as diverse as their skills -- medical
doctors from Colombia, engineers from China, a librarian from India and a
dentist from Russia. There are lawyers, a teacher, a photojournalist and a
pianist. Some have been here for years, others for just weeks.

About 40 people crowded into a room at the Intercultural Association on
Balmoral Road, hoping to figure out what to do when foreign-trained
professionals whose credentials and years of experience aren't recognized in
their new home, Canada.

Beyond the skills and experience, the one thing they have in common is
frustration. Many feel they were misled when they applied in their home
countries to come to Canada. They say they were told there are plenty of
jobs for professionals here.

"When I was at home, I had no clue," said Naama Sharabi, an Israeli
physiotherapist who came to Canada in August 2001. Despite her years of
experience there, she said that when she moved to
Vancouver Island and tried to find work she was told that her overseas credentials didn't count in this country.

It's something many immigrants have faced in Canada. Gerald Threlfall, who
used to run resort hotels in northern India, now works at a Tim Hortons
outlet in Langford.

"I think that we were certainly misled," he said. The meeting at the ICA late last week was held by the
British Columbia Internationally Trained Professionals Network, a Surrey-based initiative funded by the federal government to find solutions to the problem.

Pilar Riano, a consultant with the network, is travelling around B.C.,
hearing endless tales of professionals who can't find work in their field.
She said the goal of the network is to identify the barriers to job-finding
and work on solutions. What they have found so far are issues that range
from a lack of Canadian experience, to language deficiency, to a faltering
B.C. economy and discrimination.

Carla Fast, a nephrologist -- kidney specialist -- from Brazil, has been
through just about everything on that list. She worked for several years in
her native Santa Maria before moving to Vancouver in 1994.
Her quest to find work spanned several years, taking her to Hamilton, Ont.
and a fellowship at McMaster University before that job ended. She went back to Vancouver,
thinking she had a similar position.
But provincial cutbacks affecting St. Paul's Hospital, where the job was
supposed to be based, meant she lost out. Now, at age 36, she's working
there as a research assistant, biding her time before she and her husband
Ernst, a Canadian, move to Brazil this summer.
Her experience has been frustrating and demoralizing, she said.
"You don't see yourself as a highly-educated person anymore," she told the
group. "You feel inferior."

The meeting also acted as a brainstorming session to pool ideas for
combating the problem, one that is becoming more acute as older workers
retire. And e-mail-based news group is being developed, and the ICA has

volunteered space and resources for future meetings.
They're small steps, but many said they were happy that something is being
done.

"If we do get together and organize and push the issue... it will change,"
Fast said, adding that despite her return to Brazil, she does plan to come
back to Canada in the future. When she does, she hopes the job situation
will be much different from the way it is now.
© Copyright 2003 Times Colonist (Victoria)

Immigrants robbed of their future
Haroon Siddiqui
STAR COLUMNIST
HISTORICALLY, immigrants to Canada were not highly educated. The few who
were - doctors, engineers, professors - had little trouble getting good
jobs. Lately, however, this pattern has undergone a dramatic change.

We have been attracting very educated and qualified immigrants. Yet many
can't find the right jobs for long periods, if at all.

Second of two parts


There are two reasons for Ph.D's driving taxis. We don't need as many as we
used to, since the Canadian-born are better educated. Second, two-thirds of
the newcomers are visible minorities. They are running into systemic
discrimination in the workplace, and being treated worse than white
immigrants.

Jeffrey Reitz, professor at the University of Toronto's Centre for
Industrial Relations, has done a study that exposes the increasing
dysfunctionality of immigration integration.

He peels away the sophistry that covers up ``persistent employment
discrimination'' which he says is costing our economy up to $15 billion a
year, due to underutilization of immigrant skills, and the immigrants
themselves $40 billion, because they are paid less than the Canadian-born.

Here's his catalogue of how we are short-changing our economy and robbing
the immigrants of their due.
I. DISCOUNTING THE PAST


a) Education:

Our universities are mostly ``ignorant'' of educational systems abroad. They
use a ``crude'' method of evaluating foreign degrees, especially from Asian,
African and Latin American universities - i.e. from the non-white world.
Why? ``Cultural or racial biases,'' Reitz writes.

Employers are also prejudiced. They give immigrants only half the earning
premiums for education that they give the Canadian-born. For the latter,
``each additional year of education yields between 5 and 7 per cent greater
earnings. But for immigrants, the yield is 2 to 4 per cent.''

Is Third World education that third-rate? Reitz: ``There are many places
outside Europe, particularly in Asia where economic development is
well-advanced and where professional standards in key fields seem quite high
. . . closer to Canada's.''

More than any other factor, race is ``a more reliable predictor of how
foreign education is evaluated.''

b) Experience:

Employers ``essentially place little value, or no value, on work experience
gained outside Canada . . .

``The finding lends credence to the often-expressed complaint that Canadian
employers demand `Canadian experience.' It is not that employers always
refuse to hire anyone without Canadian experience, though this undoubtedly
happens in some cases.

``It is rather that, when it comes to the issue of experience, immigrants
who have not worked in Canada, regardless of their age or work experience in
their homeland, are generally placed on the same level as young Canadians
who have just completed their schooling.''
II. UNDERUTILIZING SKILLS


Immigrants are not the only ones employed below their deserved station. Many
Canadian-born workers are as well. So the real issue for Reitz was: ``To
what extent are immigrant skills less effectively utilized than the skills
of the native-born?''

To get at that, he counted all the hurdles immigrants encounter.

a) Non-recognition of foreign credentials by licensing bodies.

This refers to foreign-trained doctors delivering pizzas. The Star's Prithi
Yelaja recently reported cases of some who got so fed up they abandoned
Canada for the United States where they got jobs in hospitals.

It is equally true that we do not need many more doctors, especially in the
big cities. But it also makes no sense to bar foreign-trained M.D.s, who are
already here, from practising in rural and northern areas that are desperate
for doctors.

b) The reluctance of employers to hire even those licensed by the regulatory
bodies.

Why? The assumption, stated above, that foreign education and training is no
good, even where ``the foreign professional or trade standards in question
are, in fact, essentially equal to Canadian standards.''

c) The same thing is happening, for the same reason, in the so-called
semi-professions - human resources, public relations, etc. - which do not
have a licensing requirement.

d) Denial of promotions to immigrants whose scientific and engineering
skills have been recognized and who have been fully employed. The excuse for
the glass ceiling is that they lack social or management skills. This is
what happened at Health Canada, which was found guilty by a federal human
rights tribunal of racism, and ordered to undertake remedial measures.
III. PAY INEQUITY


Immigrants are employed, their skills are utilized ``but they are paid less
than native-born workers doing the same or similar jobs. This constitutes a
failure to provide equal pay for work of equal value.''


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----


Reitz is not saying that all foreign education, training and experience be
treated the same as Canadian. Rather that it is implausible to argue that
all immigrant education be discounted by half, as it is (even more in the
case non-European immigrants). Or that all experience abroad be deemed
worthless, as it often is.

``In the contemporary world where discrimination against minorities is
illegal, instances of discrimination are likely to be supported by some kind
of rationale related to qualifications, whatever the actual impact of the
qualifications on the decision.

``Often, non-recognition or discounting of immigrant skills may occur
without justification by reference to objective evidence of their
inferiority as an indicator of productivity in the Canadian workplace.''

In other words, the rationale proffered by universities, professional
associations, employers and governments for ill-treating immigrants,
especially non-whites, is mostly an elaborate sham.

It is eastablished that immigrants are illtreated for their qualification and experience. Question still stands, what should be the action on recieving this kind of treatment ?
I blame myself to sit through a test of multiplication, division, substraction and addition by HR of a company despite of their awarness of my qualification. I feel them mocking behind doors when they see me seriously appearing for the test with the hope of escape from labour.
I strongly beleive that answer is with us, it requires a united move........

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Try overtaking child's imagination

It is really stupid to see post after post of people complaining about how the canadiain immigration system did them in. I fully understand that it can be very frustrating and discouraging to come here and not find a job in one's own profession and have to do odd jobs etc etc. BUT what needs to be taken into account is that just because Canada lets 'skilled' workers in, does not mean they guarantee you a job in your field.

99% of the problem is pure economics. The job market is such that it is tough to get a job for anyone; this is not a problem limited to only immigrants.

Quote from Jago-desi

It is eastablished that immigrants are illtreated for their qualification and experience. Question still stands, what should be the action on recieving this kind of treatment ?
I blame myself to sit through a test of multiplication, division, substraction and addition by HR of a company despite of their awarness of my qualification. I feel them mocking behind doors when they see me seriously appearing for the test with the hope of escape from labour.
I strongly beleive that answer is with us, it requires a united move........

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

As an FYI- I was a supervisor for a company that interviewed many people for jobs in our company. The Math and English skills test was mandatory for all applicants whether qualified overseas or here. I have interviewed people with Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Ryerson, York, U of T, McGill, etc and even they had to sit for these tests.
And again as an FYI nobody mocked them behind closed doors. If anything we mocked the stupid HR guys who made such tests mandatory.

For your info also, many desis would use shortforms like fon for telephone and others and when I would see a desi/e I would tell him/her these are unaccepted here so please write out in long form.Also some to show off their English skills would use words like superfluous( which once the HR manager asked me what it meant) instead of redundant. Even showing that your English is high funda is not accepted as the high ups also don't understand it and you are rejected for it. The person who used superfluous was rejected because she used that word and a chinese lady was selected in her place- stupid criterion to reject somebody but there are so many applicants with similar credentioals nowadays that HR picks on asinine points to reject somebody.They want a smart person but not a smart-aleck person.
Anyway, long FYI- but I agree with you that there are tons out there who do not get jobs in line with their qualifications and I am working with a committee to try and amend the situation- but it is a long process.
You are the one super- complaining- what have you contributed to amend the situation? Have you volunteered for an org to address this issue?
Have you written to your MP? Visited Judy Sgro or Joe Valpe? Or are you just chaabi lagaoing the people? I am doing my fair share- whatever time I can devote. Some progress has been achieved but the going is ever so slow. There are some who want to take the revolutionary route like some Chinese and Russkies and they have already engaged lawyers. These are backed by powerful Russian and Chinese personalities. Maybe you can do the same with powerful Indian personalities. Try.

Here's anothe r FYI- I wrote to the MP in my riding who is South Asian signing my own name which is Indian sounding and got no reply. I rephrased the letter and sent different back-up ( articles in newspapers, mags etc) and signed it Michael Dudeskrio and would you believe it , within ten days I got a reply from the MP's office. Indian MP's do not want to help Indian brothers but will help other national people in their riding. The strange thing is that I was told this MP replies to all letters and does his best to help anybody of any nationality. However, my experience says he is biased. But then maybe my original letter didn't reach him. Canada Post can fail sometimes too.

Bas, bahut hogela bai!
BKB

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Get what you want by helping others get what they want