[lg policy] Should Canada screen immigrants based on language or country?

Wed May 9 15:25:40 UTC 2012

Should Canada screen immigrants based on language or country?

Joe Friesen - The Globe and Mail

The unrelenting economic gloom in Europe inspired voters in both
France and Greece to change governments this weekend. It’s also been
compelling tens of thousands of the continent’s young people – for
instance in Spain, where unemployment is above 50 per cent for those
25 and under, as well as in Greece, Portugal, Italy and Ireland – to
consider emigrating to more prosperous shores.

Meanwhile, Canada is in need of hundreds of thousands more immigrants
in the next decade just to fill its labour-market needs, not to
mention to counter its rapidly aging demographics. Should it take
advantage of Europe’s plight and target those countries to find
skilled and educated potential migrants?

That thought raises the more general, and sensitive, question of
whether Canada should favour applicants schooled in systems and
cultures closer to its own. Immigrants from Western Europe tend to do
better economically, and faster, than other newcomers. The average
starting wages of new immigrants in Canada have dropped dramatically
since the 1980s, a period that’s seen rising immigration from Asia and
diminishing numbers from Europe.

But many experts say that shifting the balance back would mean Canada
was abandoning a 50-year commitment to assessing immigrants without
regard for race or national origin – a policy deliberately adopted in
the 1960s to shake off the legacy of shameful policies such as the
$500 “head tax” that Chinese immigrants were charged in the early 20th
century.

Canadian policy has taken one step in the direction of geographic
targeting with Citizen and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s
announcement earlier this year that the government intends to require
higher levels of proficiency in either English or French among
immigrants admitted in the future, as part of the selection system
that allots prospective new Canadians points for their education,
experience and skills.

In theory the ability to speak a language is open to everyone. But
English or French fluency is much more common in some places than in
others.

“The points system was introduced to create a more objective system
that wouldn’t screen out based on race, national origin or mother
tongue,” says Debbie Douglas, director of the Ontario Council of
Agencies Serving Immigrants. “Intentionally or not, [this change] will
privilege Western Europe and other parts of the world, probably India
and Pakistan. …But most of the global south will be screened out.”

“I think there’s little question that there will be a significant
shift in source countries. And the country that will be most affected
is China,” agrees Naomi Alboim, a professor in the School of Policy
Studies at Queen’s University and a former deputy minister in the
Ontario Ministry of Citizenship. “English-speaking countries will rise
to the fore.”

Taking a hint from down under

Many of Mr. Kenney’s reforms are modelled on the Australian system,
which has introduced stricter language requirements in several stages
over the last 13 years. By 2007 skilled immigrants required a
“vocational” (fairly high) level of fluency for admission. As a
consequence, says Prof. Alboim, Australia’s share of immigrants from
the U.K, Ireland and New Zealand rose, while the proportion from China
declined. There was, however, an improvement in economic outcomes for
immigrants there in that time – and that’s the result Canada is trying
to emulate.

Ratna Omidvar, president of the Maytree Foundation, says that every
piece of research she has seen indicates that language ability is
critically important to newcomer integration, both at work and in the
community more broadly.

“You might have fantastic educational credentials, but if you don’t
have the language skills you cannot get full value for those
credentials in Canada,” Prof. Sweetman said.

It’s crude but commonplace to measure the economic success of
immigrants by nationality. American and British immigrants for
example, earn more than the Canadian average shortly after they
arrive, which is far better than any other immigrant group. Filipinos
have lower levels of income, but they also have among the highest
rates of employment. Other national groups, including Iranians,
Pakistanis and Chinese, have levels of income below the average for
all immigrant groups.

Consider the experience of Chinese immigrant Wade Sha, 42, who came to
Calgary from Shanghai, where he ran a plant for a German manufacturing
company. He was also considering Australia, but an immigration
consultant told him he had a better chance of having his application
accepted in Canada.

Mr. Sha arrived in 2009 and found work at Pitney Bowes as a salesman,
a level lower than he was aiming for. He says he accepts that he has
to start at a lower rung in a new country, although he did find it
disappointing. His ambition is to become a manager in Canada, but it’s
going to be difficult. Even though he speaks nuanced English, he still
feels language is a barrier.

“It’s very hard for me to get to where I was in China,” he says. “I
can improve my English, my understanding of the culture, but I can
never get rid of my accent. I think that’s a barrier for me doing
business with the locals. … I can feel it. If I spoke without an
accent people would feel more comfortable with me.”

There are also cultural differences that get in the way of the
relationships you need to build in business, he said. Hockey is often
treated as common ground in Canada, but it’s not a sport he watches or
understands. “Guys want to talk about the hockey game last night and I
don’t know what to say.”

The prairies call to Europe

At the moment the federal government does little active recruitment
for immigrants abroad, but provinces, employers and post-secondary
institutions do. And for provinces that traditionally have been less
likely to receive immigrants, targeting has become an important
component of their strategy.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall was recently applauded for flying
across the Atlantic to encourage young Irish workers to come seek jobs
in the booming prairies. And Manitoba – frequently praised for its
handling of immigration through the provincial-nominee program –
likewise takes aims at groups it believes will be comfortable in the
province, which means mostly but not entirely the nationalities
experts call “old-source” countries.

Most recently the province has turned its attention to Ukraine to find
people interested in settling in its rural areas, knowing that many
present-day Manitobans already have Ukrainian roots. As well, however,
the province continues to bring in people from the Philippines, a
less-traditional source country, but one with a large and successful
diaspora in Manitoba. Joining an established community is one thing
that helps immigrants from anywhere adjust more easily.

It’s difficult to untangle the factors involved in the economic
difficulties experienced by Canada’s more recent immigrants, as Arthur
Sweetman and Garnett Picot wrote in a recent paper for the Institute
for Research on Public Policy. Language ability aside, they often face
a labour market that can’t or won’t make sense of their education and
work experience, as well as racial discrimination.

Those barriers may be lower for immigrants from Europe. But Howard
Ramos, a sociologist at Dalhousie University, says that is not a
strong enough reason to deviate from the nation’s long-held
egalitarian values. “To move in that direction would fundamentally
change the socially just society that has been built in the last 50
years in modern Canada.”

More pragmatically, while an emphasis on old-source countries might
produce better economic outcomes in the short term, it could also have
other effects. There may not be enough migrants from English-speaking
countries to maintain or increase Canada’s immigration levels, for
example. A sudden shift in the attainability of immigration may have
an impact on Canada’s ties to a country such as China – studies have
shown that trade ties increase through immigration, and losing that
advantage could be a much bigger economic drawback than any spending
on services for underpaid Chinese immigrants.

Overall it would be a mistake, says Prof. Ramos, to conceive of the
uneven outcomes for different immigrant groups as evidence that
immigration was failing.

“Immigrants in Canada have a high degree of integration. This
[language] policy doesn’t reflect that success at all. It’s creating a
problem where I don’t necessarily think a problem exists,” he says.
“The points system was introduced to correct the injustices of
focusing on culture and language too heavily. It was a society and a
time that was much more ethnocentric – and I don’t think it’s a time
we should try and return to.”

To find out what immigration looks like in your community, see an
interactive look at solutions to Canada's immigration problem and
share your own story click here.

Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article2425494.html#ixzz1uO1UOPbU

http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article2425494.html

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents.
Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal,
and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message.
 A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well.  (H. Schiffman,
Moderator)

For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
listinfo/lgpolicy-list
*******************************************

_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list