Beefed up at the border

Immigration is a subject that very few commentators dare approach, for fear of being branded a racist or worse. As a result, any reasonable debate on this issue is nipped in the bud.


However, I think it is high time that Canada addressed the immigration issue with a good dose of realism, because this country is suffering and so are many of the immigrants living here.

One of the more pressing problems is the recognition of foreign credentials. Too many Ph.D.’s, M.D.’s, etc. have to work as janitors or taxi drivers, because our current immigration system has misrepresented the facts to these people.

Under the points system, a medical doctor would get the top score for qualifications. However, upon arrival in Canada, this new immigrant would find out immediately that his qualifications are not recognized, despite having been given the top score, and that he would have to return to medical school for a considerable number of years.

It would appear, therefore, that our government is misleading and lying to potential immigrants around the world.

The example of medical doctors not being able to pursue their chosen profession in Canada is just one of many; the same is true of foreign-trained engineers, nurses, lawyers, etc. It does not make any sense whatsoever that a lawyer trained in the UK, for example, should have to enrol and complete at least 1.5 years in a Canadian law school before being allowed to sit for the bar exam. And that is not even the problem. The problem is getting into a law school, because law schools give preference to first-year law students over foreign-trained lawyers from other countries. So, you may be put on a waiting list for a number of years before actually getting a chance to re-take those 1.5 years in law school as required by the Law Society. Add to this the waiting time for getting into articling and the articling period itself, and you may be looking at almost ten years of “additional” legal training in Canada. No wonder, then, that such foreign-trained lawyers start paralegal businesses, which the Law Society is not too fond of, if I may add.

While the current immigration system is frustrating for many of today’s immigrants, it also places a heavy burden on Canadian society. Canada takes in immigrants, whose full potential cannot be realized under the current system, thus forcing these people into desperate situations. Some of them, with a less stable character, may and will turn to crime to support themselves and their families, and that creates more problems for our citizens.

Then, there is another problem: that of language. Under our immigration laws, immigrants have to show that they can speak, read and write English and/or French at a functional level. However, the issue of language is often ignored in today’s applications, and that is why we end up with people who are, in fact, functional illiterates – regardless of whether they are doctors, engineers or whatever.

Such immigrants, naturally, turn to menial jobs, but even there, the lack of language skills creates problems in the workplace and beyond.

I know a woman from New Brunswick, who lives and works in Toronto. She works at a factory that assembles chairs – the aluminium kind with a padded seat and back. She is the only “real” Canadian at that factory. Her co-workers don’t speak English or only very little English. She says that the company has problems with orders and products all the time, because their workers cannot even follow the simplest of instructions. And nobody seems to care, not even the unions. As a result, productivity and morale are very low at that factory, which, in its own way, also has repercussions for the economy and society as a whole. In this case, for example, some operations, like payroll, have now been outsourced to the States, because it was felt that the local resources were insufficient. In other words, jobs have been lost to the USA in this case.

In light of all these problems, I propose the following program:

1. The government should stop lying to potential immigrants around the world. Do not make them believe that there is a job waiting for them here, just because they have an M.D. Revise the points system and ensure that only applicants are admitted that actually have something to contribute to Canada (mind you, I am only talking about immigrants, not refugees. Refugees must be dealt with under international law and the Canadian charter. Immigrants, however, are not people fleeing from persecution or torture, which is why we need to screen them more carefully and ensure that Canada can actually benefit from these newcomers).

2. Language skills must become a top priority. Even the best brain surgeon in the world is no good to us here in Canada, if he cannot speak English and/or French.

3. Immigrants, once they have landed in Canada, must be subjected to mandatory language testing after the first six months. Those that pass will see their immigration status finalized; those that fail must go in for language classes and will be tested again after another six months. If they fail again, their status should be revoked.

4. The recognition of foreign credentials must be streamlined and accelerated. Instead of forcing immigrants back to school, the various professional bodies must provide their own training so as to upgrade newcomers’ skills and to bring them in line with Canadian expectations. For example, coming back to lawyers, the Law Society must provide individual-study programs for foreign-trained lawyers to help them achieve a Canadian level of the law. I also firmly believe that these programs should be paid for by the professional bodies themselves, with some assistance by the federal government.

Canada has such a huge potential that is just waiting to be harvested. Right now, we have our apartment buildings cleaned by doctors and have ourselves chauffeured to the airport by university professors and engineers. At the same time, more and more Canadians are becoming frustrated with having to deal with people that do not speak any of our official languages. This affects our society and, in the business world, our productivity.

Now is the time to act, to unlock that enormous potential that has been slumbering in Canada.

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