Immigrants In Canada

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Canada’s immigration policies are very restrictive and opt for selecting new residents based on their appealing human capital. Immigrants selected under the skilled worker class are predicted to have the most success integrating into the Canadian workforce. Unfortunately, they still experience the reality of the struggles ahead in securing employment. Difficulties integrating into the Canadian labour market can include communication barriers, a lack of recognition of their credentials, and employer’s who request that they have Canadian work experience. The labour markets interpretation of high skilled workers and the federal skilled worker credentials are at a disconnect and there is a lack of accessible bridging programs to facilitate integration. …show more content…

Research suggests that education obtained overseas is not as valuable as Canadians education over here and there is a gap in the earnings between Canadian born and immigrants for the same jobs (Picot, 2004). Even with that said, immigrants from visible minority groups fare worse than white immigrants even if educated in Canada. (Tolley, 2003) This relationship shows that discrimination is a factor in getting employed sometimes more so than education. In the labour market there is non-recognition of foreign education and although these immigrants are worse off than their Canadian counterparts they are still better off than immigrants without any …show more content…

The relationship between experience and potential earnings are similar to those in education. Returns on post-immigration experience are greater than those for pre-immigration experience (Tolley, 2003). Jeffrey G. Reitz even goes as far as to say that his research shows that “the labour market value of foreign work experience in Canada is effectively zero.” Employers have requested a need for Canadian experience. Canadian Experience encompasses hard skills and soft skills (Sakamoto et al, 2010), hard skills describes having work experience in Canada and soft skills describes more cultural cues. Employers look at soft skills to measure how someone will fit in to their work environment (Sakamoto et al, 2010), in an ethnographic account presented in the paper by Izumi Sakamoto a job seeker shared a checklist he goes through on job interviews; “If you sit back in the chair during the interview you are perceived as too lazy. If you sit forward in the chair then you are seen as too eager. If you place your hands on the interviewers desk you are seen as invading the person’s personal space” these are cues that are said to be very confusing, and can only be acquired by experience and over time. Employers do not want additional costs when hiring to train individuals on soft skills so Canadian Experience as a requirement has become increasing popular. The Ontario Human Rights Commission published the

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