Dear Mr Atif
I came across your fervent appeal to people who have landed here to narrate the actual conditions existing here.I landed here from India 3 years ago and have written detailed articles on the situation here.The articles got wide publicity for their indepth content across India, NZ, Australia, Canada and I was even asked by some people by email whether they should come here.
I am enclosing both my articles for your ready reference.Go through them.Every word in these articles spells the truth, the whole truth and nothing else but the truth.My intention of writing these articles initially was to to create a sense of public awareness so people do not fall into this trap by getting carried away by the rosy pictures painted by immigration agents.
I shall be happy if you can also email this article to as many of your friends who are thinking of coming here.
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Dear Mr Editor
Time and again there are articles written on the plight of immigrants in Canada.Politicians pay lip service and promise to do something before they get elected; however after the elections these same promises are seen going to the winds.Other political parties are also not much concerned and want to draw political mileage if anything from this issue.Stephen Harper is to send his immigration critic across Canada to find out what Canadians think about this issue, Jack Layton is frustrated...does anyone try to find out what the immigrants think? He or she would rather not, as the person would face harshest reactions and criticism.
Moreover politics is a numbers game:New immigrants don't form a voting bloc as they have no voting rights.So they suffer silently as in the Hollywood movie: Silence of the lambs!
However if money means anything to the policy makers of this country they should consider the loss in billions of dollars to this country which is twofold:
[1] By underutilizing skills of qualified immigrants
[2]The ill-will Canada gets abroad by word of mouth and subsequent reduction in revenue due to a fall in the number of aspiring immigrants.
These factors should make policy makers sit back and take note and ensure that immigrants are not treated like second class citizens.

In my country I was last working as plant manager with a very large company manufacturing automobiles.
However after coming to Canada I was greatly disillusioned.
I personally visited several industries in GTA, faxed and emailed my resume to hundreds of other industries but drew a blank.I was called for only two interviews in two years but inspite of doing well and being told my job profile, or being asked my salary expectations and being asked to follow up which I meticulously did, nothing materialized.This is the experience of thousands of immigrants landing in this country.
The whole job market is hidden.However if you are lucky enough for someone to refer your name then all requirements of a resume vanish into the thin air and you land your dream job !
This country lets in immigrants based on point rating which depends on technical qualifications, experience etc.However there are very few jobs available here for qualified people and 99% are pushed into labour jobs.These are survival jobs only and you make no economic progress unless husband and wife both work.
While Ottawa lets in immigrants based on qualifications and experience all applicants are required to sign a statement which says that they will have to get certified by local bodies to work in their fields.The same qualifications which help them to get immigration are not recognized after they land here.
Then why are these qualifications recognized for immigration? Its because the government is fully aware that only qualified people who are financially strong can come along with funds of 10000$ each.
In other words the eye is on strengthening the economy without any tangible benefits to the newcomers.
120000 people come every year bringing 10000$ each and this appears to be a big business for the government of this country.
After one lands here there is little or virtually no support to settle down.Only qualified immigrants are allowed to come because with qualified people working in factories, there will be fewer mistakes, quality of the jobs will be better, qualified people will not unionize, so a very congenial atmosphere for the industries for maximizing output.....
The whole system is developed in such a way as to exploit the individual.
The standard pay in all factories ranges between 8$/hour to 12$/hour.Labour agencies have completely cornered all the jobs so no factories employ you directly.There are no benefits in agency jobs; agencies get 4$-6$ extra per hour you work...so they too extract their pound of flesh and add insult to your injuries. It takes 2 years before a man can settle down in a permanent labour job, that too a job far below his qualifications. The new immigrant lands up in a job which is intellectually demeaning, frustrating, leading to intellectual starvation and with leaner paycheques.Not only that, a refugee coming to Canada barely able to speak English is on par with a qualified professional with years of experience and both get 8-12$ an hour! A qualified immigrant is equated to a refugee who comes to this country putting a burden on its social welfare...devoid of funds, devoid of skills...
Is Canada fast becoming a country of refugees, international terrorists and criminals rather than being a land of opportunity for professionals and techies? Is Canada wanting this dubious distinction thus incresing social costs of welfare and security concerns without tangible benefits to this nation ?
While we consider the costs to this nation resulting out of this fall-out we have lost sight of the social costs to the individual.Apart from economic hardships immigrant families are seen to be breaking up and falling apart [and there are innumerable examples of this] as a result of these constant tensions, the responsibility of which entirely lies on this country.

Since a qualified immigrant is not accustomed to doing jobs involving manual labour in his country, he ends up with many physical bodily injuries such as back-pain, rheumatism etc and may be forced to go on welfare.
Does this represent Canada, a modern society of the first world?
Statistics has shown that the harsh ground realities are already raising their ugly head which is reflected in a drop in home buying and a fall in tenancy occupancies to the cextent of 5% across GTA.
What makes things even worse is that new immigrants planning to upgrade themseves can do so when they get E.I.First E.I is after about 900 hours of work.Agency jobs last from a couple of days to a few weeks after which there is a lean period before one can get the next assignment.Completion of 900 hours becomes a tall order, and even more so, completion without a gap between assignments. Frequent gaps between consecutive assignments, though no fault of the individual lead to lesser E.I.
The employment insurance that they offer in case you lose your job is so pathetic that you cannot make both ends meet! Emploment insurance was reduced from 90% a few years back to 70% then and now stands at 55% !
Whatever little the immigrant may try to keep away for the rainy day is promptly consumed by exhorbitant rents so the immigrant is left with nothing at the end of the month.
Some immigrants try to overcome the situation by doing co-op jobs.Here again the immigrant is put to disadvantage as he has to work full time, for not less than three to four months, with no guarantee of placement where he works, without being paid a single penny!
Immigrants are on extremely meagre resources and no immigrant can do an unpaid full time job for three to four months as it would become a question of his survival. Probably with a little political will and redistribution of funds deployment, immigrants could be paid a stipend to cover their maintenance costs, part of which could be shared by industry as well as the government.This would be a win win situation for all parties concerned:The industry gets the right man with low initial costs, the immigrant lands more smoothly into his field of expertise and the government can develop a realistic statistics of the quantum of real skilled labour requirements to be fulfilled by immigration.
The question arises as to why immigrants continue to put up and stay here.Its not out of love of the land.The immigrant is in the most unenviable situation.I have come across highly qualified engineers who come to this country by selling off all their assets back home.Even if they may have retained their jobs for a limited period, for them it is akin to starting life afresh like a 25 year old as they have sold everything, before arrival to this land of promises and fortunes.

We had a Tory goverment in Ontario. This government did yeoman service to immigrants by freezing the minimum wage rates at a paltry 6.85$/hr for 9 years!This government decontrolled the rents so rents became unmanageable for middle class and new immigrants..While previously 80% of the apartments had a moderate rent of less than 800$ per month now less than 20% were available in that range.
Pressure on the food banks increased, pressure on subsidized housing increased...hardships became unbearable for immigrants.
The message is loud and clear:This country is not interested in the welfare of immigrants.They are interested in strengthening their economy at the expense of the immigrants.

This has been the longtime philosophy of America: Exploit the countries around the world and enjoy the highest standards of living at their expense.In Canada there are two Canadas: The native Canada and the non-native Canada. It is a divide between the native born and the outsiders.Native Canada enjoys the highest standars of living at the expense of non native Canada.
When U.S was a developing nation they brought labour from Africa to work for them.They exploited Africa of its cheap labour.
At one time India and China were the two richest economies.The British exploited India economically and reduced it to penury.
In this connection it is worthwhile reading the book "Economic surveys by Karl Marx". He has clearly outlined giving facts and figures how the British exploited India and the world in general...
Today we are in a modern world.So Canada has developed a more refined and sophisticated way of exploiting the intellectual skills of the nations in Asia.
It is worthwhile noting the sequence of exploitation: first exploitation of unskilled African labour, then economy of countries around the world and now exploitation of intellectual skills!
This country is committing crimes against humanity!

This country is blessed to get the best qualified professionals from around the world.
Policy makers could have applied their skills in making the economy of this country vibrant and competitive with the U.S by properly channelizing and utilizing the skills of immigrants rather than playing second fiddle to the U.S.
This is a mixed reaction which I have by speaking to various immigrants.You may modify its language to remove anything offensive but without loss of meaning.It represents the extreme pain faced by immigrants today.
I shall appreciate if you publish it in the interests of the common good.
Shirish Gadgil


Article 2
Dear Atif
This is the second and last article I write to highlight conditions of immigrants in Canada and at other places in the world. Trust you find it informative.
As a sequel to my last article I receiived various reactions.Some appreciated my genuine efforts and suggested me to send it to as many newspapers as possible; others called me a downright pessimist and loser!
I have tried to study this problem by discussing with numerous people:People who have stayed here for as long as 35 years ! The information I gathered is very revealing and worth going through.They have given their opinions off the record.
As in other countries here too there are pressure groups and lobby groups which lobby with the party/government to protect their own interests.As is always the case, the common man is the loser.
Consider the following:
[1](One of the probable reasons given to me by people who have stayed here for several years [and many of them are also stuck in labour jobs inspite of qualifications] is that there is a tie-up between industry and the universities and colleges here.Both are privately run and form a mutual interest group.Therefore industries are obliged to give jobs to students passing out from educational institutions here only as students take loans to complete their education here.So even highly qualified immigrantsa are left out when it comes to giving jobs.If immigrants start getting jobs[and there is no dearth of qualified immigrants..120000 every yearas per one statistics] then the students here would be left out of jobs.This in turn would affect the educational institutions as fewer and fewer would opt to study in these insitutions which would be detrimental to the business of education.
[2]CGA ia a Canadian qualification while CPA an American one.Till recently both were on par but then suddenly one day both the CGA practitioners here as well as the educational institutions realized their incomes getting affected by recognition of CPA.Certified professional accountants[CPA] were then derecognized by the government when educational institutions and CGAs lobbied with the government.So this was a purely political decision based on numbers game of politics; not because CGA is academically different or better than CPA!
[3]The goverment cries hoarse about the shortage of doctors.Then why is it that the qualifications of highly successful doctors coming from abroad not recognized?
I spoke to some of these doctors as well as to old timers here.They told me that doctors lobbied with the government not to recognize overseas qualifications as their incomes would get affected.Incidentally it is worth noting that doctors earn very high incomes here ranging anywhere around 300000$! Just to give an idea of just how many people have that kind of salary...directors of power stations earn around this figure!
[4]As for those working in factories, the salaries are simply pathetic.Salaries start at 8$-11$ an hour and the yearly increments are a pathetic 1$-1.10$.These increments are supposed to be rewarding[?!]as such high[?]increments are present only in unionised environments. I spoke to some friends who are working in non-unionised environments.Their story was even more telling.They said their increments are anywhere between 25cents[I repeat: 25cents] to 35 cents a year!
98% of these immigrants working in factories are qualified professionals with experience ranging from 5-25 years in their fields of expertise!
[5]I spoke to some people known to me in the banks : people working in banks in good positions of authority and who are here for a number of years.They told me that I should not think that the pension plans will suffice me after I retire.The plans are extremely meagre; so much so that people who bought houses in their lifetime had to sell them off and stay in old age homes so that the sale would give them enough funds for post retirement living for about 10 years when coupled with their income from pension plans.
One person who is a Canadian citizen and stayed here for 35 years told me that he gets just 350-400$ pm! This figure was again given to me by another family and a man now studying taxation.He told me that the highest figure of payment last year stood at a measly 430$ pm.!

Now some news from around the world:
Similar conditions exist in NZ.A friend was telling me that there are hardly any jobs available there.Seasonal jobs like fruit picking are there during spring but the rest of the year is difficult to survive.The majority works in food outlets, gas stations etc.Here too the advertisements are tailor made to suit their own white people when it comes to supervisory jobs so that immigrants are left out in cold.
A typical ad would run something like this:"Wanted for a supervisory position: An experienced person around 25/30 with not less than 10 years experience in food outlets". Immigrants travelling to NZ go on a point rating.To get qualified to go as permanent residents to NZ they must have professional qualifications with a few years of experience.So they can never be there in NZ at the age of 30 with 10 years experience in food joints.
Then who qualifies? The locals obviously, who are school drop-outs by 15 or 17 and start working in these outlets so they already have 10 years experience by the age of 30 to become supervisors.!They have qualified professionals from abroad working under them.For the professionals ofcouse this is highly unnerving resulting not only in a leaner paycheque but also a bruised ego!
The vast majority whether in NZ or Canada or other countries calling for immigrants, drive taxis, work in Mcdonalds, KFCs etc...that includes not only those from India and other Asian countries but also those from Easten Europe, Ukraine, China etc!
When the Canadian Prime Minister says this country needs 100000 engineers every year he does not spell out that they are required for labour jobs and not for supervisory positions...Now thats what I call diplomacy and dirty politics!
This represents a classic case of social subjugation and must be fought tooth and nail..by word of mouth, by educating people at large in home countries...
Join your hands with me and email this article to as many as possible and let those in turn tell others...let this become a chain reaction !

This post is very interesting and an eye opener. I will send the link of this thread to as many people I know who have applied for immigration.

This hasn't changed my decision to immigrate but certainly helped me condition my mind (and ofcourse my family's) to prepare for whats in store.

However, immigration is a long way for me (I applied in 2004), so we will take the final decision considering the situation at that point.

THE GREAT IMMIGRATION SCAM
Friends
Here is an article I came across, written by a white man criticizing their own immigration policy and the truth behind it.Hope you find it as an eye-opener.

THE GREAT IMMIGRATION SCAM
MIKE TAYLOR UNCOVERS A GLOBAL SWINDLE

By: Paul Fallavollita

Mike Taylor’s The Truth About Immigration deftly uncovers what future historians will undoubtedly call "The Great Immigration Scam." This swindle takes place both globally and nationally, orchestrated by elites connected with multinational corporations and international finance who are obsessed with the "bottom line."

Taylor, a former immigration investigator for the Canadian government, reveals that these elites desired access to Third World resources and markets following the Second World War and the decolonization of Asia and Africa during the next two decades. To maintain friendly trading relations with these new nations, the West adopted an egalitarian and humanitarian façade, opening its borders to Third World immigrants. These events prove E.H. Carr’s observation in The Twenty Years’ Crisis that self-interest is often cloaked in altruist garb.

At home, the elites sought to increase profits by depressing the wages of labor and weakening the countervailing power of labor unions, regardless of the effect on the social fabric and cohesiveness of the nation. Flooding Canada with poor immigrants and "refugees" furthered this goal. These immigrants were radically different from their Western hosts, and the ensuing tensions guaranteed that public concern would focus on identity victimology rather than economic and class issues, giving the elites a "free pass."

Taylor highlights the "propaganda value" to elites in admitting Third Worlders to the wealthy West, just as they claim that anybody in Canada can succeed if they work hard. This is nothing less than the globalization of the Horatio Alger myth. Taylor challenges many such myths, including the myth that immigrants are needed to do the grunt jobs in a successful economy. For instance, he rightly asks how Canada filled such jobs before the 1970s.

The book boldly addresses the National Question: What is a Canadian? What makes Canada unique and different from the constituency of the UN General Assembly or the Tower of Babel Revisited? Thankfully, Taylor is courageous enough to point out that Whites are endangered as a race; they are a shrinking percentage of the world’s population, due in part to feminism and low fertility rates. He makes the case that Whites should not be ashamed to fight for their own interests and should work to retake the country they founded and built. Taylor discusses the "good cop-bad cop" routine the elites play on White Canadians in order to get them to cooperate in their own demise: feel-good diversity propaganda on the one hand, and on the other, "hate speech" laws for anyone who objects.

Taylor wisely makes a distinction between acceptance of diversity versus acquiescence in the face of dispossession, and he contrasts the richness of particularity, an organic and ethnic nationalism, from the abstract "civic nationalism" that is now promoted by the elites. He restores the meaning of the once-honorable word "discrimination," which meant "fine intellectual discernment," just as he challenges the basis for the Orwellian use of that same word today.

The elites may yet curtail immigration, emphasizing skills over raw numbers, but this shift does not cure the larger problem. Taylor notes, "Big business would like nothing better than to flood the market with high-tech workers so as to depress professional wages." Americans will recognize the parallel with their own H1-B visa program.

American readers will find much in Taylor’s book that speaks to their concerns. Taylor shows that there is an eerie attachment between the immigration policies of Canada and the United States. For example, when the U.S. repealed its Asian Exclusion Act in 1943, Canada did so in 1947. When the U.S. opened its doors to the Third World in 1965, Canada followed suit in 1967. As signs of backlash appeared in America in the late nineties, they also emerged in Canada. On another front, the United States has a problem with Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, arriving and replicating their own self-contained cultures. Taylor shows that the same process is happening in Canada: substitute the word "Asians" for "Mexicans."

Patrick Buchanan’s Death of the West, released four years after Taylor’s book, covers some of the same ground as Taylor, and is one of the top non-fiction bestsellers today. Buchanan read Taylor’s book as a resource while putting his own together. There are important differences between the two books. Taylor focuses on a meat-and-potatoes economic and class history of immigration, while Buchanan deals more with the philosophy of the social movements of the sixties and analyzes the Gramscian "Long March through the Institutions" launched by the Frankfurt School radicals. Taylor’s book is free of the Catholic social teaching sub-themes that infuse Buchanan’s work, making Taylor’s book more accessible to non-Catholics. The fact Taylor is a man of the Left who opposes open immigration also invites attention and garners credibility. Only Nixon could go to China.

Perhaps one of the strengths of Taylor’s book is that it is not Buchanan’s book. While there is an advantage gained from Buchanan’s visibility and name recognition on the immigration issue, there are also liabilities. Some focus too much on the messenger rather than the message, and important points are lost in the noise. Readers are more likely to approach Taylor’s text without this "prejudice of the personalities," making his book a better "conversion tool" for immigration-restrictionist activists.

For the West, there is cause for hope. Taylor writes of cleaning up the immigration problem, "any number of restrictive measures could be implemented, only the political will is lacking." He predicts things may get worse before they get better, but notes that Whites ultimately "will not go willingly into that racial slaughterhouse" that the New World Order has built. Taylor, a fine Canadian patriot and defender of our Western Civilization more broadly, gives us the truth we need to resist global capitalism’s attack on the nation-state. Taylor’s book, if widely read, will help generate the "critical mass" needed to muster our collective political will.

The Truth About Immigration: Exposing the Economic and Humanitarian Myths. Mike Taylor. Coquitlam, BC: Karma Publishing. 1998. Paperback. ISBN 0-9683952-0-1. $19.95 (CDN). 250 pp.

Friend
Here is another article I came across on this issue.

New Delhi, June 11: Far from being the El Dorado of repute, for many immigrants Canada has emerged as a land of unmitigated disaster. From rampant discrimination to hidden booby traps, Indians have been forced into an economic quagmire that has generated despair and dejection.

Wretched tales abound of even highly qualified Indians landing up in Canada, only to find that they don't get the job that their college degrees and experience require, having to instead settle for a dead-end job, even to the extent of being a sweeper with a PhD!

Unfortunately, for those who actually manage to land the job they want, are sometimes paid 80% or even 70% of the amount a white Canadian will be paid for the same work. This is increasingly happening in recent years, signalling that Indians and the rest of Asians are deliberately discriminated against.

While many say that previously most white Canadians were not really highly educated and that is why immigrants from Asia in the 60s, 70s, and 80s were able to bag jobs that were highly lucrative and satisfying, turning Canada into the proverbial land of milk and honey for themselves.

No longer. The International Herald Tribune's Clifford Crauss tells the tale of Gian Sangha who was so desperate for a job that he willingly cut his hair and removed his turban to canvass for employment, even though he was a Sikh.

An environmental scientist, Sangha even had a doctorate from Germany and had taught in US. "Here in Canada, there is a hidden discrimination," Sangha said. He says Canadian institutions have refused to give him jobs sometimes providing excuses that he is over-qualified for the job!

He is suing them for discrimination. To scrape by, he once cut lawns. Now he does clerical work and shares his house with his extended family. It was not supposed to be this way in Canada, which years ago put out a welcome mat to professionals from around the developing world. With a declining birth rate, an aging population and labor shortages in many areas, Canada, a sparsely populated nation, has for decades opened its doors to engineers, health professionals, software designers and electricians.

But the results of this policy have been mixed, for Canada and for the immigrants. Recent census data and academic studies indicate that the incomes and employment prospects for immigrants are deteriorating. Specialists say a growing number of immigrants have returned to their homelands or migrated to the United States. About 25 percent of recent immigrants with university degrees are working at jobs that require only high school diplomas or less, government data show.

However, writes Crauss, the Canadian public continues to support the government's goal of increasing immigration, and relations among ethnic groups are good, though neighbourhoods in some cities are becoming more segregated. But some fear that if opportunities for immigrants do not expand, social cohesion may suffer. "The existing system is broken," said Jeffrey Reitz, a sociologist who studies immigration at the University of Toronto. "The deteriorating employment situation might mean that Canada will not be able to continue this expansionist immigration program in the positive, politically supported environment that we've seen in the past."

Reitz estimates that foreign-educated immigrants earn a total of $2 billion less than an equivalent number of native-born Canadians with comparable skills because they work in jobs below their training levels.

What immigrants may also be up against is a system that refuses to recognise many of the degrees earned by these people back home. It creates the kind of piquant situation where Canada advertises for doctors and nurses abroad, yet refuses to give Indian medics a job in a hospital, because their degrees are not valid here. Thousands are left jobless.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but not for immigrants. Crauss says, the children of immigrants, who enter the job market with Canadian credentials, typically do better at acquiring high-paying jobs. "We have an arcane infrastructure of professional organizations that essentially mitigate against the immediate integration of these highly skilled immigrants," Joe Volpe, the minister of citizenship and immigration

Volpe said he was concerned that news from disappointed job seekers would seep back to their native countries and discourage qualified people from immigrating.

For Sangha it may have become what he says is "a painful life. I'm angry and frustrated. I never thought it would be like this in Canada."

Immigrants find themselves going cold, wet and hungry in a land they had sacrificed everything they owned to reach. Believing they would be treated well, that their willingness to work long and hard even in inhospitable conditions of Canada would bring them wealth, that jobs would be aplenty, these people are now in a situation that is threatening their health and life because of the longstanding nature of their woes.

They can't even go back to India. Some feel ashamed to go back penniless to their families. It would mean that they were not smart enough to do well as the going principle is that, 'In vilayet even monkeys become millionaires'. Others simply can't put together enough money to pay for their ticket.

This trend has increasingly translated into numerous Indian families moving into so-called slum areas of Canadian cities as they increasingly get impoverished.

For these people ebullience has turned into depression and their chance for plenty has transformed into poverty. Many of them have been left scrounging on Canada's unemployment benefits even having to rely on unemployment insurance and welfare, which is anathema to an Indian.

The only thing in all this misery that is making them continue to hold body and soul together are their children. They are expected to do better and achieve the dreams that have been denied to their parents.

Hope, and scant else, is all that these Indians have been left with after travelling tens of thousands of kilometres to a foreign land. They must be ruing the day they decided to get their passport and jet out of India.

The truth about immigration to Canada
Thousands of eager immigrants arrive in Canada only to discover their education and professional credentials are almost worthless.

The situation is so bad that this week an Edmonton couple decided to sue the federal government.




It is a great irony to many in the immigration field, and to newcomers themselves, a bitter joke. Canada has a shortage of skilled professionals, and yet thousands of internationally trained doctors, engineers, teachers and nurses are forced to deliver pizzas and drive taxis.

Some immigrants believe that this is intentional, that Canada wants them only for their genetic potential. They may sweep floors and clean offices, but their offspring will be intelligent and creative. Why else would the government accept them and then make it so very difficult to have their credentials recognized?

Citizenship and Immigration Canada bristles at such a suggestion, and advises immigrants to check the ministry's Website, which clearly warns newcomers there is no guarantee they will find work in their chosen profession.

Still, frustration is mounting: This week, a British-trained accountant and his bookkeeper wife launched a lawsuit against the federal government, alleging that they were misled by immigration officials who assured them they would find good jobs here. Instead, the couple -- he is originally from Sri Lanka and she from Malaysia -- have spent five years in Edmonton shovelling snow, cleaning toilets and borrowing money to support their teenaged son.

"What angers me is we are capable people. We have the credentials. We just can't get the jobs," complained Selladurai Premakumaran, who feels the government has shattered his hopes and dreams.

Last year, when Canada changed the way it selects immigrants, many were happy to see the end of the old system, which matched newcomers with worker shortages.

Critics had long complained that, by the time the physiotherapists and teachers arrived, those jobs had been filled and the labour shortages were in other fields.

Now, Canada chooses immigrants based not on their occupation, but on their education, skills and language abilities. Applicants must score 67 of a possible 100 points to be accepted. Ostensibly, being talented and smart should make them more employable.

But it isn't working out that way. Canada is recruiting the right kind of people, but they are stuck in a bottleneck, as the agencies and bodies that regulate the fields of medicine, engineering, teaching and nursing struggle to assess their qualifications.

"We have a disaster on our hands," says Joan Atlin, executive director of the Association of International Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

"There are thousands of un- and under-employed foreign professionals across the country. At the same time, we have a shortage of skilled professionals, especially in the health-care field. We don't so much have a doctor shortage as an assessment and licensing bottleneck."

About 1,300 doctors from more than 80 countries have joined the association she heads, but she estimates there are many more out there. Ontario alone may have as many as 4,000, most of them still trying to get their medical licences.

At the same time, there is a shortage of as many as 3,000 physicians across the country, especially in smaller communities in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario (provinces that have been forced to recruit doctors from South Africa, whose medical training Canada considers acceptable).

A recent Statistics Canada study of 164,200 immigrants who arrived in 2000 and 2001 found that 70 per cent had problems entering the labour force. Six in every 10 were forced to take jobs other than those they were trained to do. The two most common occupational groups for men were science (natural and applied) and management, but most wound up working in sales and service or processing and manufacturing.

As well as credentials, there is a problem with supply and demand.

Patrick Coady, with the British Columbia Internationally Trained Professionals Network, believes that far too many engineers are coming -- as many as 60 per cent of all those accepted each year. (In Ontario, from 1997 to 2001, nearly 40,000 immigrants listed engineering as their occupation.)

"When they arrive, the Engineering Council for Canada evaluates their credentials, which sets up the engineer to think there are opportunities here," Mr. Coady says. "Then they discover that each province has a body that regulates the industry. They need up to 18 months of Canadian work experience before they will get professional engineering status. And, there isn't a great need for consulting engineers. A lot of the infrastructure has already been built in this country."

Michael Wu, a geotechnical engineer from China, is a classic example of what's happening. Accepted as a landed immigrant last spring, he came here with his wife and child, leaving behind a relatively prosperous life in Beijing, and now works for $7 an hour in a Vancouver chocolate factory.

Back in Beijing, "I had a three-bedroom apartment and took taxis everywhere -- the Chinese government sent me to build a stadium in St. Lucia," says Mr. Wu, who has a PhD. "Here, no-one will hire me. Many engineering companies think engineers make false documents. They are suspicious of my qualifications. I never imagined I'd end up working in a factory. But I will keep trying. Every month I go to the Vancouver Geotechnical Society lecture."

Susan Scarlett of the Immigration Department points out that regulating the professions is a provincial, not federal, responsibility. "We advise people who are thinking of coming to Canada to prepare by really researching how their credentials will be assessed."

Ms. Atlin says that "Canada has been very slow to change. Our regulatory systems have not caught up with our immigration policies."

But some relief may be on the horizon because the issue has become such a political flashpoint.

A national task force is about to report to the deputy minister of health on the licensing of international medical graduates. And this month Denis Coderre, the federal Immigration Minister, announced that he wants to streamline the process of recognizing foreign credentials, and have provinces announce their inventory of needs so Ottawa can work to fill the shortages.

A doctor 'ready to go anywhere, rural Saskatchewan, small-town Ontario . . .'

Tina Ureten, a diminutive, well-dressed physician from Turkey, was always the hardest-working child in a family of hard workers.

She knew from an early age what she wanted to be, and left home to study science, math and biology at an elite boarding school in Ankara, the Turkish capital. As a scholarship student, she endured ridicule from her friends when she chose to spend summer after summer honing her language skills at a special English-language camp. She aced her university entrance exams, and was one of 20,000 candidates in a field of 400,000 to be accepted by the nation's medical schools. By 30, she had been appointed associate professor of nuclear medicine, a hi-tech field that uses radioactive materials for diagnosis.

Had she stayed in Turkey, she would be at the top of her profession today, a full professor in a department. Instead, she met a Turkish engineer at an international conference, and ended up immigrating with him to Toronto.

Dr. Ureten, now 42, knew it would be difficult to get her medical licence here. But she didn't know it would be such a bureaucratic, disheartening and ultimately fruitless journey.

"I sent my application to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons 2½ years ago, and I haven't even received a response. I worry my file is lost in a drawer somewhere," she says. "I called my MP and she called the college, and said they were driving her crazy too.

"I am ready to go anywhere, rural Saskatchewan, small-town Ontario. The irony is, almost every province has a shortage in nuclear medicine. This country needs my skills."

When she came here, Dr. Ureten knew she'd have to write exams and was prepared to retrain. She and her husband sponsored their in-laws to come and look after their two young children so she could spend her days in the library studying.

It took her two years to write three of the Medical Council of Canada's evaluation exams, because there is a six-month gap between exams (not the case in the United States).

She passed all three tests but wasn't accepted in the medical residency program. More than 150 people applied for one position in nuclear medicine, and the odds are stacked against foreign-trained doctors. (In Ontario, foreign-trained doctors cannot even compete directly for residency positions open to graduating medical students, but are restricted to a few specialties in short supply.) There is a separate stream for foreign-trained doctors, but it has only 125 spaces for graduates in specific fields -- and nuclear medicine is not one of them.

Dr. Ureten fingers an inch-thick binder, which contains all of her credentials, carefully translated and annotated. There are her fellowships at the University of Wisconsin and in Basel, Switzerland; her training course with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and dozens of peer-reviewed articles published in international science journals.

She sent them all off to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in May, 2001. In the past, the college approved the credentials only of doctors who trained in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and England, but two years ago announced a program encouraging all foreign-trained physicians to send in their documents.

Since then, the college has received 600 applications from more than 140 countries, and approved 60 international medical graduates to take Canadian exams in their specialties, says its director of education, Dr.Nadia Mikhael. Dr. Ureten's case is considered "inconclusive," she says. "This case has taken a long time because we are still waiting for Turkey to provide evidence so that we can judge the accreditation system of their postgraduate medical education system.

"We don't want to compromise our Canadian standards. And we have to make other specialties a priority, like gynecology, anesthesiology and obstetrics."

Joan Atlin, executive director of the Association of International Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, says it is misleading for the college even to invite international physicians to send in their résumés because it is impossible to assess the programs of hundreds of medical schools around the world.

She believes a better solution is to assess people on the job. Ontario recently launched a clearing-house program that would do just this: assess fully trained foreign graduates during six-month rotations in hospitals.

"This is the right approach, but it is really just a drop in the bucket."

And it won't help Dr. Ureten because nuclear medicine, once again, is not one of the five specialties in the fast-track program.

"I feel like they are making it impossible. There are some authorities who just don't want foreign doctors in the system," she complains. "I am ready to go anywhere. There is a need in Canada for people like me, trained, ready to go."

Between cramming for medical exams, she found time to train as an ultrasound technician and a medical and cardiac sonographer. Recently, she opened UC Baby in Mississauga, one of the first clinics in Canada to offer pregnant couples a three-dimensional ultrasound and real-time movies of their unborn babies.

"I'm proud of my clinic," she says, "but I still feel I'm overqualified for this."

She yearns for her true love. "I have met many smart, skilled people from many countries, and you know what? Many are leaving for the U.S., where doctors can more easily be integrated into the system."-- Marina Jimenez

A need to nurse

Milica Cerovsek, 46, was a nurse in a military hospital in Sarajevo for more than 17 years: She tended soldiers in the intensive-care unit, assisted with colonoscopies and tended to all manner of emergencies in the surgical unit.

She loved her job so much she sometimes volunteered to work double shifts, forfeiting a night's sleep to nurse patients around the clock, much to her husband's chagrin.

In 1992, conflict in the region spread to open war, people split on ethnic lines, and soon the city was under attack. Although an ethnic Serb, Ms. Cerovsek didn't want to fight; she wanted safety for her two young children. Using her daughter's illness as a pretext, she fled to Belgrade to see a skin specialist, knowing she would never return.

Two years later, she arrived in Calgary as a political refugee, and was soon joined by her husband, a professor of aeronautical engineering. As well as their homeland, they had lost their family, culture and status as respected professionals.

Ms. Cerovsek agreed to put her career on hold while her husband, reduced to delivering pizzas for $7 an hour, went back to school to retrain as an engineer. In 1997, she finally was able to enter the work force: she qualified as a massage therapist to pay for the long, arduous process of becoming a Canadian nurse.

Two years ago, she applied to the Alberta Association of Registered Nurses, gathering together the documents necessary to complete the Assessment of Eligibility for Registration. She had to get in touch with her nursing school in Sarajevo and pay to have transcripts of her marks sent directly to the AARN.

The association asked her to take a course in English proficiency, and spend $2,000 on a one-year refresher program in nursing at a community college. She did both, only to be told she lacked credits in obstetrical and psychiatric nursing.

"I couldn't believe it. They asked me to go back and do these courses after all my many years of experience," Ms. Cerovsek says. "They said, 'According to your papers, you lack 35 hours of obstetrical nursing training in Sarajevo.' But I had thousands of hours of experience delivering babies, giving injections, assisting doctors in surgery and doing all kinds of nursing."

Ms. Cerovsek also planned to pursue geriatric nursing, and had no intention of working in a delivery room, or a psychiatric ward. "I had to spend several thousand more dollars taking these courses. At that point, I really felt like giving up because it seemed so bureaucratic."

Donna Hutton, executive director of the AARN, sympathizes but says the association is responsible for maintaining standards and is working "with the government and educational institutes to develop bridging programs for international nurses."

The perseverance that saw Ms. Cerovsek through the upheaval of Sarajevo is helping her through her marathon quest to become a nurse in a province that needs them. (Alberta has a shortage and in the next five years see 10 to 20 per cent of its nurses will reach retirement age.)

She recently completed the two courses and is ready to begin clinical training and preparing for the national exam. The process has taken four years, and cost about $6,000.

"I know so many nurses from Sarajevo who would become nurses tomorrow, but it's too expensive and complicated," she says. "My daughter came home from school and said, 'There is a huge shortage of nurses. Should I study nursing?'

"I told her, 'You should only do it if you really love it like I have.' It's been like my third child and I can't wait to get back to it."

Removed.

There's been an article in today's newspaper stating that the Canadian govt. is looking to increase the number of immigrants coming in to fulfil the increasing shortage of skilled manpower & to boost the economy.

How's that?

Thanks & regards.

Rajan.

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