Wasted Talents, Opportunities, Expectations
It defies practical intelligence that people with professional qualifications and experience who enter Canada from countries abroad as landed immigrants are not able to practise their professions once it has been established by committees representative of such professions that their experience and education reflects the very same qualities that Canadian-educated professionals practise.We have an admittedly serious shortage of health professionals. We invite highly educated people with professional degrees and backgrounds to come to Canada to enrich themselves and the country with their presence. Yet we deny them the opportunity to freely practise these professions to to take their place in Canadian society as proud members of the society. While it may be true that Canadian Immigration officers will inform prospective immigrants that their qualifications will not be recognized as being commensurate with those of Canadian professionals, and that they will have to take steps once on Canadian soil to qualify for practise, there is still a gap of understanding.
People come to Canada for the opportunity to live in a free democracy, a progressive country with a culture and traditions which may appeal to them, in furthering a lifestyle more agreeable than that they have experienced elsewhere. Their level of education, perceived ability to integrate into the Canadian civil tradition and culture are what has enabled them to enter the country as prospective new citizens to begin with. Why would these people not believe that they would be given the opportunity to pursue the fruit of their education in making a place for themselves in the new country?
We need medical practitioners of every description, desperately. People with doctoral degrees in the teaching professions, in engineering, in physics, in medicine, come to Canada with the belief that they can live comfortably here with their families. Instead they discover that there are many bureaucratic roadblocks to professional access to positions, and they find themselves desperately looking for jobs, any kind of jobs, that will put food on the table for their families.
In the process they must find immediate work, they must learn a new language, fit into different societal mores and civic culture, and try to discover the key that will permit them access to their former professional status. We're doing something dreadfully wrong when for decade after decade people with higher education and professional capabilities find themselves working as orderlies in hospitals where in their home countries they ran hospital departments.
When we have engineers and former university lecturers driving taxis, delivering pizzas, we are not enabling these people to reach their full potential within the country and we are short-changing Canada, as well. If we have the will, we must find the wherewithal. Otherwise, this enormous waste of talent, expertise and goodwill will certainly evaporate and leave in its wake an embittered, hopeless and alienated sub-culture.
How does that help Canada?
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, June 20, 2006
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