Canada Boosts Funding To Help Skilled Immigrants From India, China & Philippines

Canada is pumping millions of more dollars to make it easier and faster for Indians immigrating to Canada to settle down professionally and personally in their new country.

Under a new plan unveiled, 15 million dollars will be spent to expand the current foreign credentials recognition and labour market programmes offered by the Canadian government in New Delhi, Manila and Guangzhou in China.

Canada’s federal minister for Citizenship and Immigration, Jason Kenney, says the new funding will help more would-be immigrants from these three countries to jump-start their professional lives in their new country by starting the process to have their qualifications recognised even before they leave their home countries.

The money will go to the Canadian Immigration Integration Project (CIIP), which is run by the Association of Canadian Community Colleagues (ACCC). The Integration Project began its services on a pilot basis in 2007, and so far more than 7,000 have gone through  its pilot programmes.

According to Canadian officials, the three offices, along with a soon-to-be opened office in London to offer services to Nordic and Arab countries, will offer services to more than 70% of the immigrants selected under Canada’s federally run skilled workers immigration programme. Furthermore, it will also offer services to more than 40 percent of immigrants selected under the country’s provincial nominees programme.

The free sessions offered by the Project include labour market information, individual advice and planning and the referral to the various services available at the federal and provincial levels. There will also be on-line tools for a number of issues, including help immigrants begin their licensure process even before they arrive.

Furthermore, as not everyone would be able to access the services in person, the ministry has developed an online version, and this can be accessed at www.credentials.gc.ca.

The new funding is an acknowledgement that the Canadian government has taken seriously the concerns raised by skilled immigrants and settlement groups who say one of their biggest challenges is to have foreign credentials recognised.

More Money, New Deals To Help Immigrants

Canadian government has already allocated 50 million dollars over a two-year programme to develop a common national approach towards recognition of foreign credentials.

There has also been a Pan-Canadian Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Qualifications deal between the federal provincial and territorial governments to facilitate faster recognition of foreign credentials.

Under the programme, a skilled immigrant will know within a year of applying whether or not his or her credentials be recognised here, and to what level.

Language Fluency, Teamwork Can Affect Immigrant’s Career Mobility

Two dollars and eighty cents Canadian.

This is the difference in the hourly wage of an immigrant Canadian with a degree and a ‘non-immigrant’ Canadian of equal qualifications and training.

Career Success of Immigrant Professionals: Stock and Flow of Their Career Capital

A new study that has appeared in the International Journal of Manpower says a non-immigrant professional would get about $ 30.10 an hour while an immigrant professional with the same qualifications that includes Canadian workplace training, will earn 27.30 an hour.

One of the critical conclusions of the study, that was co-authored by academics from Canada’s York University and University of Mississippi in the USA, is that there is more than just workplace training and development for a person’s career development.

It Is Not Just Training

The study found that while both immigrant and non-immigrant employees undergo the same type of training funded by their employers, it is a different story when it comes getting higher salaries, promotions or even increased job satisfaction. Immigrant professionals score low in all these sectors.

The study points out to one factor as a potential reason for this situation: lack of ‘cultural fluency’. This would include language limitation, including possibly the lack of experience in ‘Canadian English’, and the cultural difference in the education and training many immigrants have had.

For example, corporate cultures that emphasis on teamwork would be a stumbling block because while Canadian-born professionals have had this type of training and experience through their schools and later universities, the educational system in countries from where these immigrants come are different, the study points out.

By extension, therefore, while it is a good that for training is available for everyone, the training manuals have to take into account the cultural differences of employees.

Role of Biases and Stereotypes

Finally, the study does not discount that cultural biases and stereotypes can also play a role in denying immigrant professionals the rightful place in the workplace but this is something the study did not take into account.

But there is one interesting fact the study points out: immigrant/minority-friendly companies out-perform the Fortune-500 companies.

A number of studies have also pointed out how countries like Canada are losing billions of dollars by not utilising the experience of immigrants appropriately.

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Employer’s Roadmap to Help Hiring of Skilled Immigrants

The Canadian government has come up with a new tool kit to help local employers hire and retain foreign trained professionals.

The Employer’s Roadmap aims to help employers find qualified immigrants to fill their vacancies.

The Roadmap is full of links to resources that range from seeking the Labour Market Opinion, should they want to fire someone directly from abroad, to interpreting foreign credentials and experiences of immigrants.
It also gives tips to employers as to how to reach out to foreign trained professionals.

Studies have shown that while the education levels of Canada’s newcomer population has been increasing, the labour market integration has been slow if not in decline, and this has become not just a political and social issue, but one of economic as well because of the billions of dollars the country loses by forcing engineers and doctors to drive cabs.
And successive governments have taken a number of measures to alleviate this situation.

The Employer’s Roadmap can be found here.