"It's one of the worst forms of oppression," says immigrant
Fuzail Siddiqui of Markham, Ont., has a master’s degree in geology, a doctorate in mineralogy, 10 years’ experience in teaching and 25 years in high-level positions in the mining industry in Zambia.
He doesn’t understand why he couldn’t get calls, especially for postings that matched exactly his skills and experience.
Facing pressure to put food on the table, Siddiqui eventually opted for a maintenance job at a golf course in Stouffville, Ont.
“Our system is bringing over the creme de la creme of the other countries. And when people have poured their life savings into Canada and come here to find that they can’t practice the professions that they love and for which they’re trained, it’s one of the worst forms of oppression,” said Siddiqui, a member of the Policy Roundtable Mobilizing Professions and Trades.
The roundtable is a coalition of immigrant professional groups with the mandate of fighting for increased access for immigrants to professions and trades.
Siddiqui’s story has become all too familiar. Due to a policy emphasis on economic-class migrants over refugees or family-unification immigrants, the country has been attracting increasing numbers of highly skilled workers from abroad. The problem is, once here, they have a tough time finding work commensurate with their level of expertise.
Some analysts see the problem as a mismatch between foreign and Canadian credentials.
In a background paper for the C.D. Howe Institute, a conservative think tank, Carleton University economics professor Christopher Worswick opposed an increase in current immigration levels while changes are implemented to the current selection system. Among his recommendations is co-ordinating the work of credential assessment services — including those carried out by post-secondary institutions — to identify foreign educational institutions and programs that can be shown to offer training that’s equivalent to that offered in Canada.
“Considerable expertise exists that could facilitate the introduction of a points system that incorporates the transferability of education and work experience in the selection of skilled workers,” stated Worswick in the paper.
Having a “list of preferred institutions,” said Worswick in an interview with Canadian HR Reporter, could help new immigrants “take the information to an employer and say, ‘I know you don’t know my university, but the federal government says this is equivalent.’ The other thing that’s useful is if the employer doesn’t hire the person and the immigrant candidate thinks they’re discriminated against, they might have a better chance of winning in court.”
He also recommends reducing the points awarded for years of experience, as a work history abroad apparently yields no return in Canada. If one compares a 40-year-old engineer from China with a 25-year-old engineer with the same degree, he said, “We’d normally expect that the 40-year-old would have higher earnings due to his years of experience, but we’re not seeing that at all.”
Ignorance on the part of employers may be one cause of the skills recognition problem; discrimination may also be at play, he said. “And the third possibility is the education isn’t equivalent. It may not be inferior in quality, but it may be that a person has learned things that are relevant for the home country labour market but really aren’t equivalent to what we have here.”
Siddiqui doesn’t buy the argument. Even while having no luck finding a job in the mining industry, he entered a global contest organized by Toronto-based mining company GoldCorp. He came in as a semi-finalist, and made sure to bring that fact up in subsequent job applications. “I tell them, ‘You don’t know my experience, but look, is this not proof that I am capable?’” Employers weren’t impressed, he said. There was always another reason, whether age or Canadian-training or something else.
He agrees with Worswick that a level of ignorance is at work here. A foreign institution or a foreign-sounding employer on the resume too often lands that resume in the trash bin, said Siddiqui.
“What I smell is fear. Fear of the unknown. They don’t want to take a chance and it’s too much trouble to investigate. If they select me and something goes wrong, they lose their job.” Perhaps that’s why immigrant internship programs like Career Bridge, which places experienced newcomers in try-out positions, have been so successful, he said.
“Once employers have given immigrants a chance, it’s up to the immigrant to prove himself. But what’s lacking now is this chance.”
At World Education Service, a credential assessment organization based in Toronto, director Timothy Owen said immigrant jobseekers could help employers overcome that fear of the unknown by using assessment services more routinely. (Currently, WES receives only about 5,500 assessment requests a year from local employers and jobseekers.)
Assessment services such as WES, for example, not only scrutinize transcripts and course calendars of the foreign institution to gauge the training’s equivalence in Canada, they also verify the degree or certificate for authenticity, said Owen. About one or two of 100 degrees or diplomas are fake, said Yves Beaudin of the Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials, a Toronto-based non-profit information clearinghouse that reports to all provincial ministers of education.
Both Owen and Beaudin threw cold water on Worswick’s idea that it’s possible to draw up a list of institutions offering education equivalent to Canadian training. The first problem is, educational institutions change their curricula all the time, so an assessment of a school may not be true a few years later. The second problem is, equivalent to what? Even discounting the educational differences that exist from one province to another, there are countless variations among the post-secondary programs offered by Canada’s universities, colleges and other training providers.
Such a list of equivalent schools is easier to set up for the regulated professions, because the training required in order to practice the profession is more explicit and detailed, said Beaudin. Certain professional regulatory bodies, such as the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers and the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists, have indeed begun to post a list of programs abroad that have been found to offer the required training, he noted.
Still, Siddiqui wonders if credential assessment isn’t just another arbitrary hurdle placed in front of the foreign professional. He admits that his experience here has left him bitter. The most generous interpretation of the system’s failings is that there’s a woeful lack of co-ordination between the federal and provincial governments, and between the governments and industry, said Siddiqui.
“But that’s a best-case interpretation of what’s going on. The worst-case interpretation is that there’s an ulterior motive here. It could be that the system is requiring people to have education and resources in order to screen out the criminals. But at the same time, these people are forced by time and circumstances to look through the newspapers to find jobs at the warehouse for $8 an hour.”
He doesn’t understand why he couldn’t get calls, especially for postings that matched exactly his skills and experience.
Facing pressure to put food on the table, Siddiqui eventually opted for a maintenance job at a golf course in Stouffville, Ont.
“Our system is bringing over the creme de la creme of the other countries. And when people have poured their life savings into Canada and come here to find that they can’t practice the professions that they love and for which they’re trained, it’s one of the worst forms of oppression,” said Siddiqui, a member of the Policy Roundtable Mobilizing Professions and Trades.
The roundtable is a coalition of immigrant professional groups with the mandate of fighting for increased access for immigrants to professions and trades.
Siddiqui’s story has become all too familiar. Due to a policy emphasis on economic-class migrants over refugees or family-unification immigrants, the country has been attracting increasing numbers of highly skilled workers from abroad. The problem is, once here, they have a tough time finding work commensurate with their level of expertise.
Some analysts see the problem as a mismatch between foreign and Canadian credentials.
In a background paper for the C.D. Howe Institute, a conservative think tank, Carleton University economics professor Christopher Worswick opposed an increase in current immigration levels while changes are implemented to the current selection system. Among his recommendations is co-ordinating the work of credential assessment services — including those carried out by post-secondary institutions — to identify foreign educational institutions and programs that can be shown to offer training that’s equivalent to that offered in Canada.
“Considerable expertise exists that could facilitate the introduction of a points system that incorporates the transferability of education and work experience in the selection of skilled workers,” stated Worswick in the paper.
Having a “list of preferred institutions,” said Worswick in an interview with Canadian HR Reporter, could help new immigrants “take the information to an employer and say, ‘I know you don’t know my university, but the federal government says this is equivalent.’ The other thing that’s useful is if the employer doesn’t hire the person and the immigrant candidate thinks they’re discriminated against, they might have a better chance of winning in court.”
He also recommends reducing the points awarded for years of experience, as a work history abroad apparently yields no return in Canada. If one compares a 40-year-old engineer from China with a 25-year-old engineer with the same degree, he said, “We’d normally expect that the 40-year-old would have higher earnings due to his years of experience, but we’re not seeing that at all.”
Ignorance on the part of employers may be one cause of the skills recognition problem; discrimination may also be at play, he said. “And the third possibility is the education isn’t equivalent. It may not be inferior in quality, but it may be that a person has learned things that are relevant for the home country labour market but really aren’t equivalent to what we have here.”
Siddiqui doesn’t buy the argument. Even while having no luck finding a job in the mining industry, he entered a global contest organized by Toronto-based mining company GoldCorp. He came in as a semi-finalist, and made sure to bring that fact up in subsequent job applications. “I tell them, ‘You don’t know my experience, but look, is this not proof that I am capable?’” Employers weren’t impressed, he said. There was always another reason, whether age or Canadian-training or something else.
He agrees with Worswick that a level of ignorance is at work here. A foreign institution or a foreign-sounding employer on the resume too often lands that resume in the trash bin, said Siddiqui.
“What I smell is fear. Fear of the unknown. They don’t want to take a chance and it’s too much trouble to investigate. If they select me and something goes wrong, they lose their job.” Perhaps that’s why immigrant internship programs like Career Bridge, which places experienced newcomers in try-out positions, have been so successful, he said.
“Once employers have given immigrants a chance, it’s up to the immigrant to prove himself. But what’s lacking now is this chance.”
At World Education Service, a credential assessment organization based in Toronto, director Timothy Owen said immigrant jobseekers could help employers overcome that fear of the unknown by using assessment services more routinely. (Currently, WES receives only about 5,500 assessment requests a year from local employers and jobseekers.)
Assessment services such as WES, for example, not only scrutinize transcripts and course calendars of the foreign institution to gauge the training’s equivalence in Canada, they also verify the degree or certificate for authenticity, said Owen. About one or two of 100 degrees or diplomas are fake, said Yves Beaudin of the Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials, a Toronto-based non-profit information clearinghouse that reports to all provincial ministers of education.
Both Owen and Beaudin threw cold water on Worswick’s idea that it’s possible to draw up a list of institutions offering education equivalent to Canadian training. The first problem is, educational institutions change their curricula all the time, so an assessment of a school may not be true a few years later. The second problem is, equivalent to what? Even discounting the educational differences that exist from one province to another, there are countless variations among the post-secondary programs offered by Canada’s universities, colleges and other training providers.
Such a list of equivalent schools is easier to set up for the regulated professions, because the training required in order to practice the profession is more explicit and detailed, said Beaudin. Certain professional regulatory bodies, such as the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers and the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists, have indeed begun to post a list of programs abroad that have been found to offer the required training, he noted.
Still, Siddiqui wonders if credential assessment isn’t just another arbitrary hurdle placed in front of the foreign professional. He admits that his experience here has left him bitter. The most generous interpretation of the system’s failings is that there’s a woeful lack of co-ordination between the federal and provincial governments, and between the governments and industry, said Siddiqui.
“But that’s a best-case interpretation of what’s going on. The worst-case interpretation is that there’s an ulterior motive here. It could be that the system is requiring people to have education and resources in order to screen out the criminals. But at the same time, these people are forced by time and circumstances to look through the newspapers to find jobs at the warehouse for $8 an hour.”
