Posted by: canadaindians@yahoogroups.com
Time and again there are articles written on the plight of immigrants in Canada. Politicians pay lip service and promise to do something before they get elected; however after the elections these same promises are seen going to the winds. Other political parties are also not much concerned and want to draw political mileage if anything from this issue. Stephen Harper is to send his immigration critic across Canada to find out what Canadians think about this issue, Jack Layton is frustrated... does anyone try to find out what the immigrants think? He or she would rather not, as the person would face harshest reactions and criticism. Moreover politics is a numbers game: New immigrants don't form a voting bloc as they have no voting rights. So they suffer silently as in the Hollywood movie: Silence of the Lambs! However if money means anything to the policy makers of this country they should consider the loss in billions of dollars to this country which is twofold: (1) By underutilizing skills of qualified immigrants; (2) The ill-will Canada gets abroad by word of mouth and subsequent reduction in revenue due to a fall in the number of aspiring immigrants. These factors should make policy makers sit back and take note and ensure that immigrants are not treated like second class citizens. In my country I was last working as plant manager with a very large company manufacturing automobiles. However after coming to Canada I was greatly disillusioned. I personally visited several industries in GTA, faxed and emailed my resume to hundreds of other industries but drew a blank. I was called for only two interviews in two years but inspite of doing well and being told my job profile, or being asked my salary expectations and being asked to follow up which I meticulously did, nothing materialized. This is the experience of thousands of immigrants landing in this country. The whole job market is hidden. However if you are lucky enough for someone to refer your name then all requirements of a resume vanish into the thin air and you land your dream job! This country lets in immigrants based on point rating which depends on technical qualifications, experience etc. However there are very few jobs available here for qualified people and 99% are pushed into labour jobs. These are survival jobs only and you make no economic progress unless husband and wife both work.
While Ottawa lets in immigrants based on qualifications and experience all applicants are required to sign a statement which says that they will have to get certified by local bodies to work in their fields. The same qualifications which help them to get immigration are not recognized after they land here. Then why are these qualifications recognized for immigration? Its because the government is fully aware that only qualified people who are financially strong can come along with funds of $10,000 each. In other words the eye is on strengthening the economy without any tangible benefits to the newcomers. 2,50,000 people come every year bringing minimum $10,000 each, and this appears to be a big business for the government of this country. After one lands here there is little or virtually no support to settle down. Only qualified immigrants are allowed to come because with qualified people working in factories, there will be fewer mistakes, quality of the jobs will be better, qualified people will not unionize, so a very congenial atmosphere for the industries for maximizing output. The whole system is developed in such a way as to exploit the individual. The standard pay in all factories ranges between 8$/hour to 12 $/hour. Labour agencies have completely cornered all the jobs so no factories employ you directly. There are no benefits in agency jobs; agencies get 4$-6$ extra per hour you work, so they too extract their pound of flesh and add insult to your injuries. It takes 2 years before a man can settle down in a permanent labour job, that too a job far below his qualifications. The new immigrant lands up in a job which is intellectually demeaning, frustrating, leading to intellectual starvation and with leaner paycheques. Not only that, a refugee coming to Canada barely able to speak English is on par with a qualified professional with years of experience and both get 8-12$ an hour! A qualified immigrant is equated to a refugee who comes to this country putting a burden on its social welfare... devoid of funds, devoid of skills... Is Canada fast becoming a country of refugees, international terrorists and criminals rather than being a land of opportunity for professionals and techies? Is Canada wanting this dubious distinction thus increasing social costs of welfare and security concerns without tangible benefits to this nation? While we consider the costs to this nation resulting out of this fall-out we have lost sight of the social costs to the individual. Apart from economic hardships immigrant families are seen to be breaking up and falling apart [and there are innumerable examples of this] as a result of these constant tensions, the responsibility of which entirely lies on this country.
Since a qualified immigrant is not accustomed to doing jobs involving manual labour in his country, he ends up with many physical bodily injuries such as back-pain, rheumatism etc and may be forced to go on welfare. Does this represent Canada, a modern society of the first world? Statistics has shown that the harsh ground realities are already raising their ugly head which is reflected in a drop in home buying and a fall in tenancy occupancies to the extent of 5% across GTA. What makes things even worse is that new immigrants planning to upgrade themselves can do so when they get E.I. First E.I is after about 900 hours of work. Agency jobs last from a couple of days to a few weeks after which there is a lean period before one can get the next assignment. Completion of 900 hours becomes a tall order, and even more so, completion without a gap between assignments. Frequent gaps between consecutive assignments, though no fault of the individual lead to lesser E.I. The employment insurance that they offer in case you lose your job is so pathetic that you cannot make both ends meet! Employment insurance was reduced from 90% a few years back to 70% then and now stands at 55%! Whatever little the immigrant may try to keep away for the rainy day is promptly consumed by exhorbitant rents so the immigrant is left with nothing at the end of the month. Some immigrants try to overcome the situation by doing co-op jobs. Here again the immigrant is put to disadvantage as he has to work full time, for not less than three to four months, with no guarantee of placement where he works, without being paid a single penny! Immigrants are on extremely meagre resources and no immigrant can do an unpaid full time job for three to four months as it would become a question of his survival. Probably with a little political will and redistribution of funds deployment, immigrants could be paid a stipend to cover their maintenance costs, part of which could be shared by industry as well as the government. This would be a win win situation for all parties concerned: The industry gets the right man with low initial costs, the immigrant lands more smoothly into his field of expertise and the government can develop a realistic statistics of the quantum of real skilled labour requirements to be fulfilled by immigration. The question arises as to why immigrants continue to put up and stay here. Its not out of love of the land. The immigrant is in the most unenviable situation. I have come across highly qualified engineers who come to this country by selling off all their assets back home. Even if they may have retained their jobs for a limited period, for them it is akin to starting life afresh like a 25 year old as they have sold everything, before arrival to this land of promises and fortunes.
We had a Tory Government in Ontario. This government did yeoman service to immigrants by freezing the minimum wage rates for 9 years! This government decontrolled the rents so rents became unmanageable for middle class and new immigrants. While previously 80% of the apartments had a moderate rent of less than 800$ per month now less than 20% were available in that range. Pressure on the food banks increased, pressure on subsidized housing increased, hardships became unbearable for immigrants. The message is loud and clear: This country is not interested in the welfare of immigrants. They are interested in strengthening their economy at the expense of the immigrants. This has been the longtime philosophy of America: Exploit the countries around the world and enjoy the highest standards of living at their expense. In Canada there are two Canada's: The native Canada and the non-native Canada. It is a divide between the native born and the outsiders. Native Canada enjoys the highest standards of living at the expense of non native Canada. When U.S was a developing nation they brought labour from Africa to work for them. They exploited Africa of its cheap labour. At one time India and China were the two richest economies. The British exploited India economically and reduced it to penury. In this connection it is worthwhile reading the book "Economic surveys by Karl Marx". He has clearly outlined giving facts and figures how the British exploited India and the world in general... Today we are in a modern world. So Canada has developed a more refined and sophisticated way of exploiting the intellectual skills of the nations in Asia. It is worthwhile noting the sequence of exploitation: first exploitation of unskilled African labour, then economy of countries around the world and now exploitation of intellectual skills! This country is committing crimes against humanity! This country is blessed to get the best qualified professionals from around the world. Policy makers could have applied their skills in making the economy of this country vibrant and competitive with the U.S by properly channelizing and utilizing the skills of immigrants rather than playing second fiddle to the U.S. This is a mixed reaction which I have by speaking to various immigrants. You may modify its language to remove anything offensive but without loss of meaning. It represents the extreme pain faced by immigrants today. I shall appreciate if you publish it in the interests of the common good.
This is the second and last article I write to highlight conditions of immigrants in Canada and at other places in the world. Trust you find it informative. As a sequel to my last article I received various reactions. Some appreciated my genuine efforts and suggested me to send it to as many newspapers as possible; others called me a downright pessimist and loser! I have tried to study this problem by discussing with numerous people: People who have stayed here for as long as 35 years! The information I gathered is very revealing and worth going through. They have given their opinions off the record. As in other countries here too there are pressure groups and lobby groups which lobby with the party/government to protect their own interests. As is always the case, the common man is the loser. Consider the following: [1] (One of the probable reasons given to me by people who have stayed here for several years [and many of them are also stuck in labour jobs inspite of qualifications] is that there is a tie-up between industry and the universities and colleges here. Both are privately run and form a mutual interest group. Therefore industries are obliged to give jobs to students passing out from educational institutions here only as students take loans to complete their education here. So even highly qualified immigrants are left out when it comes to giving jobs. If immigrants start getting jobs [and there is no dearth of qualified immigrants 250,000 every year as per one statistics] then the students here would be left out of jobs. This in turn would affect the educational institutions as fewer and fewer would opt to study in these insitutions which would be detrimental to the business of education. [2] CGA ia a Canadian qualification while CPA an American one. Until recently both were on par but then suddenly one day both the CGA practitioners here as well as the educational institutions realized their incomes getting affected by recognition of CPA. Certified professional accountants [CPA] were then derecognized by the government when educational institutions and CGAs lobbied with the government. So this was a purely political decision based on numbers game of politics; not because CGA is academically different or better than CPA! [3] The government cries hoarse about the shortage of doctors. Then why is it that the qualifications of highly successful doctors coming from abroad not recognized?
I spoke to some of these doctors as well as to old timers here. They told me that doctors lobbied with the government not to recognize overseas qualifications as their incomes would get affected. Incidentally it is worth noting that doctors earn very high incomes here ranging anywhere around 3,00,000$! Just to give an idea of just how many people have that kind of salary... directors of power stations earn around this figure! [4] As for those working in factories, the salaries are simply pathetic. Salaries start at 8$-11$ an hour and the yearly increments are a pathetic 1$ - 1.10$. These increments are supposed to be rewarding [?!] as such high [?] increments are present only in unionized environments. I spoke to some friends who are working in non-unionised environments. Their story was even more telling. They said their increments are anywhere between 25cents [I repeat: 25cents] to 35 cents a year! 98% of these immigrants working in factories are qualified professionals with experience ranging from 5-25 years in their fields of expertise! [5] I spoke to some people known to me in the banks: people working in banks in good positions of authority and who are here for a number of years. They told me that I should not think that the pension plans will suffice me after I retire. The plans are extremely meagre; so much so that people who bought houses in their lifetime had to sell them off and stay in old age homes so that the sale would give them enough funds for post retirement living for about 10 years when coupled with their income from pension plans. One person who is a Canadian citizen and stayed here for 35 years told me that he gets just 350-400$ pm! This figure was again given to me by another family and a man now studying taxation. He told me that the highest figure of payment last year stood at a measly 430$ pm.!
Now some news from around the world: Similar conditions exist in NZ. A friend was telling me that there are hardly any jobs available there. Seasonal jobs like fruit picking are there during spring but the rest of the year is difficult to survive. The majority works in food outlets, gas stations etc. Here too the advertisements are tailor made to suit their own white people when it comes to supervisory jobs so that immigrants are left out in cold. A typical ad would run something like this: "Wanted for a supervisory position: An experienced person around 25/30 with not less than 10 years experience in food outlets". Immigrants traveling to NZ go on a point rating. To get qualified to go as permanent residents to NZ they must have professional qualifications with a few years of experience. So they can never be there in NZ at the age of 30 with 10 years experience in food joints. Then who qualifies? The locals obviously, who are school drop-outs by 15 or 17 and start working in these outlets so they already have 10 years experience by the age of 30 to become supervisors! They have qualified professionals from abroad working under them. For the professionals of course this is highly unnerving resulting not only in a leaner paycheque but also a bruised ego! The vast majority whether in NZ or Canada or other countries calling for immigrants, drive taxis, work in Mcdonalds, KFCs etc... that includes not only those from India and other Asian countries but also those from Easten Europe, Ukraine, China etc! When the Canadian Prime Minister says this country needs 1,00,000 engineers every year he does not spell out that they are required for labour jobs and not for supervisory positions... Now that's what I call diplomacy and dirty politics! This represents a classic case of social subjugation and must be fought tooth and nail... by word of mouth, by educating people at large in home countries.
Time and again there are articles written on the plight of immigrants in Canada. Politicians pay lip service and promise to do something before they get elected; however after the elections these same promises are seen going to the winds. Other political parties are also not much concerned and want to draw political mileage if anything from this issue. Stephen Harper is to send his immigration critic across Canada to find out what Canadians think about this issue, Jack Layton is frustrated... does anyone try to find out what the immigrants think? He or she would rather not, as the person would face harshest reactions and criticism. Moreover politics is a numbers game: New immigrants don't form a voting bloc as they have no voting rights. So they suffer silently as in the Hollywood movie: Silence of the Lambs! However if money means anything to the policy makers of this country they should consider the loss in billions of dollars to this country which is twofold: (1) By underutilizing skills of qualified immigrants; (2) The ill-will Canada gets abroad by word of mouth and subsequent reduction in revenue due to a fall in the number of aspiring immigrants. These factors should make policy makers sit back and take note and ensure that immigrants are not treated like second class citizens. In my country I was last working as plant manager with a very large company manufacturing automobiles. However after coming to Canada I was greatly disillusioned. I personally visited several industries in GTA, faxed and emailed my resume to hundreds of other industries but drew a blank. I was called for only two interviews in two years but inspite of doing well and being told my job profile, or being asked my salary expectations and being asked to follow up which I meticulously did, nothing materialized. This is the experience of thousands of immigrants landing in this country. The whole job market is hidden. However if you are lucky enough for someone to refer your name then all requirements of a resume vanish into the thin air and you land your dream job! This country lets in immigrants based on point rating which depends on technical qualifications, experience etc. However there are very few jobs available here for qualified people and 99% are pushed into labour jobs. These are survival jobs only and you make no economic progress unless husband and wife both work.
While Ottawa lets in immigrants based on qualifications and experience all applicants are required to sign a statement which says that they will have to get certified by local bodies to work in their fields. The same qualifications which help them to get immigration are not recognized after they land here. Then why are these qualifications recognized for immigration? Its because the government is fully aware that only qualified people who are financially strong can come along with funds of $10,000 each. In other words the eye is on strengthening the economy without any tangible benefits to the newcomers. 2,50,000 people come every year bringing minimum $10,000 each, and this appears to be a big business for the government of this country. After one lands here there is little or virtually no support to settle down. Only qualified immigrants are allowed to come because with qualified people working in factories, there will be fewer mistakes, quality of the jobs will be better, qualified people will not unionize, so a very congenial atmosphere for the industries for maximizing output. The whole system is developed in such a way as to exploit the individual. The standard pay in all factories ranges between 8$/hour to 12 $/hour. Labour agencies have completely cornered all the jobs so no factories employ you directly. There are no benefits in agency jobs; agencies get 4$-6$ extra per hour you work, so they too extract their pound of flesh and add insult to your injuries. It takes 2 years before a man can settle down in a permanent labour job, that too a job far below his qualifications. The new immigrant lands up in a job which is intellectually demeaning, frustrating, leading to intellectual starvation and with leaner paycheques. Not only that, a refugee coming to Canada barely able to speak English is on par with a qualified professional with years of experience and both get 8-12$ an hour! A qualified immigrant is equated to a refugee who comes to this country putting a burden on its social welfare... devoid of funds, devoid of skills... Is Canada fast becoming a country of refugees, international terrorists and criminals rather than being a land of opportunity for professionals and techies? Is Canada wanting this dubious distinction thus increasing social costs of welfare and security concerns without tangible benefits to this nation? While we consider the costs to this nation resulting out of this fall-out we have lost sight of the social costs to the individual. Apart from economic hardships immigrant families are seen to be breaking up and falling apart [and there are innumerable examples of this] as a result of these constant tensions, the responsibility of which entirely lies on this country.
Since a qualified immigrant is not accustomed to doing jobs involving manual labour in his country, he ends up with many physical bodily injuries such as back-pain, rheumatism etc and may be forced to go on welfare. Does this represent Canada, a modern society of the first world? Statistics has shown that the harsh ground realities are already raising their ugly head which is reflected in a drop in home buying and a fall in tenancy occupancies to the extent of 5% across GTA. What makes things even worse is that new immigrants planning to upgrade themselves can do so when they get E.I. First E.I is after about 900 hours of work. Agency jobs last from a couple of days to a few weeks after which there is a lean period before one can get the next assignment. Completion of 900 hours becomes a tall order, and even more so, completion without a gap between assignments. Frequent gaps between consecutive assignments, though no fault of the individual lead to lesser E.I. The employment insurance that they offer in case you lose your job is so pathetic that you cannot make both ends meet! Employment insurance was reduced from 90% a few years back to 70% then and now stands at 55%! Whatever little the immigrant may try to keep away for the rainy day is promptly consumed by exhorbitant rents so the immigrant is left with nothing at the end of the month. Some immigrants try to overcome the situation by doing co-op jobs. Here again the immigrant is put to disadvantage as he has to work full time, for not less than three to four months, with no guarantee of placement where he works, without being paid a single penny! Immigrants are on extremely meagre resources and no immigrant can do an unpaid full time job for three to four months as it would become a question of his survival. Probably with a little political will and redistribution of funds deployment, immigrants could be paid a stipend to cover their maintenance costs, part of which could be shared by industry as well as the government. This would be a win win situation for all parties concerned: The industry gets the right man with low initial costs, the immigrant lands more smoothly into his field of expertise and the government can develop a realistic statistics of the quantum of real skilled labour requirements to be fulfilled by immigration. The question arises as to why immigrants continue to put up and stay here. Its not out of love of the land. The immigrant is in the most unenviable situation. I have come across highly qualified engineers who come to this country by selling off all their assets back home. Even if they may have retained their jobs for a limited period, for them it is akin to starting life afresh like a 25 year old as they have sold everything, before arrival to this land of promises and fortunes.
We had a Tory Government in Ontario. This government did yeoman service to immigrants by freezing the minimum wage rates for 9 years! This government decontrolled the rents so rents became unmanageable for middle class and new immigrants. While previously 80% of the apartments had a moderate rent of less than 800$ per month now less than 20% were available in that range. Pressure on the food banks increased, pressure on subsidized housing increased, hardships became unbearable for immigrants. The message is loud and clear: This country is not interested in the welfare of immigrants. They are interested in strengthening their economy at the expense of the immigrants. This has been the longtime philosophy of America: Exploit the countries around the world and enjoy the highest standards of living at their expense. In Canada there are two Canada's: The native Canada and the non-native Canada. It is a divide between the native born and the outsiders. Native Canada enjoys the highest standards of living at the expense of non native Canada. When U.S was a developing nation they brought labour from Africa to work for them. They exploited Africa of its cheap labour. At one time India and China were the two richest economies. The British exploited India economically and reduced it to penury. In this connection it is worthwhile reading the book "Economic surveys by Karl Marx". He has clearly outlined giving facts and figures how the British exploited India and the world in general... Today we are in a modern world. So Canada has developed a more refined and sophisticated way of exploiting the intellectual skills of the nations in Asia. It is worthwhile noting the sequence of exploitation: first exploitation of unskilled African labour, then economy of countries around the world and now exploitation of intellectual skills! This country is committing crimes against humanity! This country is blessed to get the best qualified professionals from around the world. Policy makers could have applied their skills in making the economy of this country vibrant and competitive with the U.S by properly channelizing and utilizing the skills of immigrants rather than playing second fiddle to the U.S. This is a mixed reaction which I have by speaking to various immigrants. You may modify its language to remove anything offensive but without loss of meaning. It represents the extreme pain faced by immigrants today. I shall appreciate if you publish it in the interests of the common good.
This is the second and last article I write to highlight conditions of immigrants in Canada and at other places in the world. Trust you find it informative. As a sequel to my last article I received various reactions. Some appreciated my genuine efforts and suggested me to send it to as many newspapers as possible; others called me a downright pessimist and loser! I have tried to study this problem by discussing with numerous people: People who have stayed here for as long as 35 years! The information I gathered is very revealing and worth going through. They have given their opinions off the record. As in other countries here too there are pressure groups and lobby groups which lobby with the party/government to protect their own interests. As is always the case, the common man is the loser. Consider the following: [1] (One of the probable reasons given to me by people who have stayed here for several years [and many of them are also stuck in labour jobs inspite of qualifications] is that there is a tie-up between industry and the universities and colleges here. Both are privately run and form a mutual interest group. Therefore industries are obliged to give jobs to students passing out from educational institutions here only as students take loans to complete their education here. So even highly qualified immigrants are left out when it comes to giving jobs. If immigrants start getting jobs [and there is no dearth of qualified immigrants 250,000 every year as per one statistics] then the students here would be left out of jobs. This in turn would affect the educational institutions as fewer and fewer would opt to study in these insitutions which would be detrimental to the business of education. [2] CGA ia a Canadian qualification while CPA an American one. Until recently both were on par but then suddenly one day both the CGA practitioners here as well as the educational institutions realized their incomes getting affected by recognition of CPA. Certified professional accountants [CPA] were then derecognized by the government when educational institutions and CGAs lobbied with the government. So this was a purely political decision based on numbers game of politics; not because CGA is academically different or better than CPA! [3] The government cries hoarse about the shortage of doctors. Then why is it that the qualifications of highly successful doctors coming from abroad not recognized?
I spoke to some of these doctors as well as to old timers here. They told me that doctors lobbied with the government not to recognize overseas qualifications as their incomes would get affected. Incidentally it is worth noting that doctors earn very high incomes here ranging anywhere around 3,00,000$! Just to give an idea of just how many people have that kind of salary... directors of power stations earn around this figure! [4] As for those working in factories, the salaries are simply pathetic. Salaries start at 8$-11$ an hour and the yearly increments are a pathetic 1$ - 1.10$. These increments are supposed to be rewarding [?!] as such high [?] increments are present only in unionized environments. I spoke to some friends who are working in non-unionised environments. Their story was even more telling. They said their increments are anywhere between 25cents [I repeat: 25cents] to 35 cents a year! 98% of these immigrants working in factories are qualified professionals with experience ranging from 5-25 years in their fields of expertise! [5] I spoke to some people known to me in the banks: people working in banks in good positions of authority and who are here for a number of years. They told me that I should not think that the pension plans will suffice me after I retire. The plans are extremely meagre; so much so that people who bought houses in their lifetime had to sell them off and stay in old age homes so that the sale would give them enough funds for post retirement living for about 10 years when coupled with their income from pension plans. One person who is a Canadian citizen and stayed here for 35 years told me that he gets just 350-400$ pm! This figure was again given to me by another family and a man now studying taxation. He told me that the highest figure of payment last year stood at a measly 430$ pm.!
Now some news from around the world: Similar conditions exist in NZ. A friend was telling me that there are hardly any jobs available there. Seasonal jobs like fruit picking are there during spring but the rest of the year is difficult to survive. The majority works in food outlets, gas stations etc. Here too the advertisements are tailor made to suit their own white people when it comes to supervisory jobs so that immigrants are left out in cold. A typical ad would run something like this: "Wanted for a supervisory position: An experienced person around 25/30 with not less than 10 years experience in food outlets". Immigrants traveling to NZ go on a point rating. To get qualified to go as permanent residents to NZ they must have professional qualifications with a few years of experience. So they can never be there in NZ at the age of 30 with 10 years experience in food joints. Then who qualifies? The locals obviously, who are school drop-outs by 15 or 17 and start working in these outlets so they already have 10 years experience by the age of 30 to become supervisors! They have qualified professionals from abroad working under them. For the professionals of course this is highly unnerving resulting not only in a leaner paycheque but also a bruised ego! The vast majority whether in NZ or Canada or other countries calling for immigrants, drive taxis, work in Mcdonalds, KFCs etc... that includes not only those from India and other Asian countries but also those from Easten Europe, Ukraine, China etc! When the Canadian Prime Minister says this country needs 1,00,000 engineers every year he does not spell out that they are required for labour jobs and not for supervisory positions... Now that's what I call diplomacy and dirty politics! This represents a classic case of social subjugation and must be fought tooth and nail... by word of mouth, by educating people at large in home countries.
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