Immigration

Well after seeing an article in the G&M that talks about the problems that immigrants seem to be having these days i'd offer a few thoughts.

One thing I learned was that our ridiculous and stupid insistence on accepting only well educated immigrants was actually a fairly recent decision, apparently this changed a lot in 1993. The focus became trying to attract more skilled workers and highly educated people.

The real shame in this country is the lack of will to try and get these workers credentials recognized. We bring in PHd engineers and they can only work as taxi drivers. We cannot continue to do this. These people are realizing that in some cases they can make more money and have more opportunities in India and China now rather than coming to Canada an washing dishes.

The stories are pretty ridiculous, but nobody seems to pay much attention to them. The credential recognizing bodies (which are provincial) are shockingly bad at accepting foreign credentials.

A while ago i heard the story of a woman from Afghanistan who was told she needed original documents in order to qualify as a teacher, only problem was her school was blown to bits in Afghanistan. Was she given any other options, nay other way to get her credentials recognized, no, original documents only. Many others are refugees who have flown the country because of persecution. These people cannot contact their governments for fear their families will be hurt, or in many cases the governments will do everything to stop these people from getting what they need.

This country has a shortage of doctors and yet there are many many capable doctors working below their capacity not as doctors, but working for minimum wage somewhere at a tim hortons.

In essence I think our policy makes absolutely no sense. We should bring in people who are willing to work lower paying jobs. We should not be stealing the elites of poor countries and then they waste their talent here.

It's no wonder that these highly educated people get discouraged. It seems like it's reaching a point where the whole thing needs to be reexamined.