Husam Dughman
Continued ..
In reaction to the extensive range of major difficulties faced by Newcomers to Canada as mentioned above, the Canadian government has taken a number of steps designed to rectify the situation (9): One of those is the establishment of the Credential Recognition Program (implemented by Human Resources and Social Development Canada-HRSDC), which targets certain regulated and unregulated professions. This program funds the Canadian Immigration Integration Project, which aims at informing prospective Newcomers of life and work in Canada. This project is run by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and the Association of Canadian Community Colleges. However, it is currently held only in New Delhi (India), Manila (the Philippines), and Guangzhou (China). Another is the Going-to-Canada Portal, which, among other things, provides prospective Newcomers with information regarding demand in Canada for their occupation and whether their occupation is regulated, as well as giving labour market information (salaries, job descriptions, skills needed, and future prospects). This portal was created by HRSDC and CIC. A third step taken by the Canadian government is the Foreign Credentials Referral Office, which provides referral services, in addition to labour market information, job search, and how to have one’s credentials translated.
Apart from the above-mentioned federal initiatives, there are provincial measures attempting to assist Newcomers: Ontario has bridge training programs, which are designed to integrate foreign-trained Newcomers into the Canadian labour force by giving them some Canadian training and work experience. Alberta has the Immigrant Access Fund, which is made up of loans for accreditation purposes; and British Columbia has Skills Connect for Immigrants Programs, with similar objectives to Ontario’s bridge training programs. The government of Ontario has created Global Experience Ontario (GEO), which is a resource centre for foreign-trained individuals; for example, it provides information about licensing in Ontario and it refers people to regulatory bodies.
Nevertheless, realizing that all of the above-mentioned programs have not significantly changed the socio-economic situation of Newcomers, the Canadian government (along with the provincial governments) began to look for other ways to deal with the problem. At first, it was thought that the dispersion of Newcomers to smaller provinces and cities might open up opportunities for them, given that cities like Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver could not absorb the huge number of Newcomers who go there to live. However, problems with enforcing these measures arose in terms of the right of the Canadian government to limit the freedom of movement of individuals in Canada, in addition to depriving them of the support and consolation they are likely to get from their own ethnic communities in the bigger cities. Realizing this, the Canadian government has come up with alternative ways to deal with this dilemma. One of these is the Canadian Experience Class (CEC): This is a federal program that targets people who studied in Canada or worked there as temporary workers. The former are perceived to do better in Canada, as was mentioned earlier in this article, where the overall matching rate for Canadian-educated Newcomers was 53%, compared to 24% for foreign-trained Newcomers. As for the latter, temporary workers, they have already shown that they can work in Canada; these are now required to do only twelve months, instead of the previous twenty four months, of full-time work in the last thirty six months, before they qualify for permanent residence. In 2011, over 6,000 individuals became permanent residents through CEC, with 7,000 expected in 2012 (10).
Another program set into motion is the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP). All provinces and territories, except for Quebec and Nunavut, have PNP agreements with the federal government. This program gives provinces the chance to select their own Newcomers for economic purposes. The provinces do require, however, that the applicant must have a job in the province in question before he is granted permanent residence. Over 36,000 such applicants immigrated to Canada in 2010 under the PNP (from about 6,000 in 2004) (11).
The Canadian government recruits around 250,000 Newcomers per year. These Newcomers come mostly from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Many of these are professionals who hold university degrees. The reason for their recruitment as given by the Canadian government is that Canada needs the “best and brightest” to fill in vacancies in Canada’s economy, thereby giving Newcomers the impression that their education, skills, and experience are in high demand in Canada. As we have already seen in this article, this is far from being the case. Most Newcomers are not working in their field and they suffer from major problems, such as the hidden market, the non-recognition of foreign credentials and experience, and discrimination. This has led to a serious deterioration in their overall situation, as evidenced by their low levels of employment and high levels of poverty, poor health, and social marginalization. Canada is, therefore, not the dreamland Newcomers had been led to believe by the marketing strategies of the Canadian government. All of the measures taken by the Canadian government to fundamentally improve the socioeconomic situation of the Newcomers have turned out to be largely unsuccessful.
It has been argued here that the most important reason for the overall sad situation of Newcomers to Canada is the lack of honesty on the part of the Canadian government regarding why Canada wants Newcomers in large numbers; in other words, there is a huge gap between “Canada the image” and “Canada the reality”. As a matter of fact, the main reason why Canada needs around a quarter of a million Newcomers every year for many years to come appears instead to be the urgent desire to compensate for population decline which, as stated earlier in this article, is expected to begin about the year 2030 (See, e.g. Endnote No. 6 below). If such a decline was allowed to happen, the Canadian government would not have sufficient tax revenues to support its public services (medical care, pension plans, and so forth), particularly when the average life span of Canadian citizens, now roughly at 81 years, could by 2031 very well increase to around 85 years, or roughly 20 years more than the retirement age as currently set in that country; in other words, the Canadian government needs to have enough resources to pay for its public services, especially its social security system, for 20 years after the individual has ceased to be a taxpayer. Unless Canada has a huge increase in its population to make this happen, the Canadian economy will simply collapse. But, we may ask ourselves, why does the Canadian government insist on importing highly educated Newcomers? Why does it require the point-based system? Why can’t the Canadian government simply get any Newcomers?
The answer to this is two-fold: First, the point-based system makes sense from a bureaucratic point of view; in other words, for the Canadian government, such a system ensures a minimum of bureaucratic difficulties (despite the present backlogs) compared to opening the door for everybody to apply. Second, the children of educated people are more likely to be educated, therefore leading to more contributions to the development of Canada as well as much greater tax revenues for the government.
While Canada’s current immigration policy may reap tremendous benefits for the Canadian government, those have been mostly one-sided; the lives of many highly educated Newcomers have been ruined as a result. In order to introduce an immigration policy that may be fair and satisfactory to all parties concerned, fundamental changes have to be made. As noted earlier in this article, the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) and the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) have so far yielded a maximum of 42,000 Newcomers a year; this is far below the number of 250,000 Newcomers needed by Canada every year. It seems, therefore, unlikely that the Canadian government would any time soon abandon its current policy of recruiting professional Newcomers under the misleading pretext that there is an abundance of professional opportunities for them in Canada.
A recent article published in one of Canada’s better-known magazines seems to add further evidence relating to the predicament of immigrant minorities in that country by pointing to the harrowing experiences of those individuals and, moreover, sharply contrasting their plight with the significantly better situation of their counterparts in the United States and the United Kingdom (12). This lends further support to the argument made by the author here: If the extent of professional, financial, and socioeconomic success and integration of immigrant minorities is to be the yardstick by which one can gauge the degree of threat of potential terrorist activities, Canada should long ago have been a far greater target of extremism than the United Kingdom or the United States.
About the author
Husam Dughman comes from a family that is historically descended from Europeans on his father’s side and Middle Easterners on his mother’s side. He was born in Libya and educated in Libya and the United Kingdom. Before Qaddafi came to power, Husam Dughman’s father had been the president of the University of Libya and his maternal grandfather had been a prime minister. Immediately following Qaddafi’s military coup d’état in 1969, both stood up to the Qaddafi regime and were consequently imprisoned: Husam Dughman’s father was incarcerated for a period of 10 years, during which he was subjected to regular torture by the Qaddafi regime, and his grandfather was incarcerated for five years.
In the 1990s, Husam Dughman returned to Libya and worked as a university professor of political science. Due to conflicts with the Qaddafi regime, he resigned from his university position in 1997 and subsequently worked in legal translation. Years later, Husam Dughman left Libya for North America, where he has been working as a Newcomer specialist, helping new immigrants with their settlement.
Husam Dughman has recently published a book, Tete-a-tete with Muhammad, and he has also published various articles about the Middle East. You can find out more by visiting his website at http://www.husamdughman.com
Endnotes:
- Zietsma, Danielle, Immigrants Working in Regulated Occupations, at www.statcan.gc.ca
- Public Policy Forum, Bringing Employers into the Immigration Debate, Survey and Conference, November 2004, at www.ppforum.ca
- Ontario Job Futures, www.tcu.gov.on.ca/eng
- Omidvar & Richmond (Laidlaw Foundation), Immigrant Settlement and Social Inclusion in Canada, www.laidlawfdn.org
- Ng, Wilkins, Gendron, and Berthelot, Dynamics of immigrants’ Health in Canada, www.publications.gc.ca/ Collection/ Statcan
- Statistics Canada, Population Projections for Canada Provinces and Territories, 2000-2026, 2001, www.statcan.gc.ca
- (a) Mayo Clinic, How do I control stress-induced weight gain?, at www.mayoclinic.com/health/stress/AN01128;
- Ontario Health Promotion E-Bulletin, The Global City: Newcomer Health in Toronto, www.ohpe.ca
See also, Statistics Canada, Population Projections, 2005 to 2031, www.statcan.gc.ca
(b) WebMD, Depression, Anxiety Linked to Weight Gain, at www.webmd.com/depression/news/20091006;
(c) Science Daily, Lack of Sleep May Increase Calorie Consumption, at www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012
9. Canadian Parliament, www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/researchpublications
10. Citizenship and Immigration Canada, News Release- “Minister Kenney announces proposed plans to expedite skilled worker transition from temporary to permanent residence”, www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/releases/2012
(11) Citizenship and Immigration Canada, News Release- “Canada plans to admit more provincial nominees in 2012”, www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/releases/2011
(12) Maclean’s, Why the World’s Best and Brightest Struggle to Find Jobs in Canada http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/land-of-misfortune/
“Canada plans to admit more provincial nominees in 2012”, www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/releases/2011