Some Skilled Foreigners Find Jobs Scarce in Canada

Jeff Vinnick/Klixpix, for The New York Times

Gian S. Sangha, an environmental scientist from India who has failed to land a job commensurate

with his skills in Canada, with his wife, Sukhminder, left, and mother, Kishan, at home in Surrey,

British Columbia. By CLIFFORD KRAUSS Published: June 5, 2005

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 2 - Gian S. Sangha wanted to work so badly he cut his hair and removed his turban when interviewing, even though it compromised his Sikh beliefs. He sent hundreds of rsums. He prayed fervently and finally bought a Buddha statue for good luck.

But Mr. Sangha, 55, an environmental scientist from India, could not seem to get a job in Canada, his adopted country, despite a doctorate from Germany, two published books and university teaching experience in the United States.

"Here in Canada, there is a hidden discrimination," Mr. Sangha said over cups of Indian tea and spicy pakoras, or fritters, in the dining room of his home in the suburb of Surrey. To scrape by, he once cut lawns, and now does clerical work and shares his house with his extended family.

It was not supposed to be this way in Canada, which years ago put out a welcome mat to professionals around the developing world. With a declining birthrate, an aging population and labor shortages in many areas, Canada, a sparsely populated nation, has for decades encouraged foreign engineers, health professionals, software designers and electricians.

But the results of this policy have been mixed, for Canada and for the immigrants. Recent census data and academic studies indicate that the incomes and employment prospects of immigrants are deteriorating. Specialists say a growing number of immigrants have been forced to rely on unemployment insurance and welfare, and some have even returned to their homelands or migrated to the United States.

About 25 percent of recent immigrants with a university degree are working at jobs that require only a high school diploma or less, government data show.

"The most mobile workers in the world come to Canada and find themselves immobilized," said Faviola Fernandez, a teacher from Singapore who became an immigrant advocate after finding the process of getting a teaching license in Canada so unwieldy that she gave up.

Over the last decade, the country has attracted 200,000 to 250,000 immigrants a year - measured as a percentage of the population, that is triple the rate in the United States. Canada's largest cities are ethnic mosaics of great diversity. One in every six people in Canada immigrated, giving it the world's second-highest proportion of immigrants. Only Australia's is higher.

Officials in South Africa and other countries have even begun to complain to Canadian officials that they are losing talent trained in their universities in a brain drain they can ill afford.

But very frequently, highly skilled immigrants, who are nearly half of those who come here, are driving taxis and trucks, working in factories or as security guards, and hoping their children will do better.

The Canadian public continues to support the government's goal of increasing immigration, and relations among ethnic groups are good, though neighborhoods in some cities are becoming more segregated. But some fear that if opportunities for immigrants do not expand, social cohesion may suffer.

"The existing system is broken," said Jeffrey G. Reitz, a sociologist who studies immigration at the University of Toronto. "The deteriorating employment situation might mean that Canada will not be able to continue this expansionist immigration program in the positive, politically supported environment that we've seen in the past."

Mr. Reitz estimates that foreign-educated immigrants earn a total of $2 billion less than an equivalent number of native-born Canadians with comparable skills because they work in jobs below their training levels. Drawing on census data, he judges that in 1980, new immigrant men earned 80 percent of the salaries of native Canadian men, and that the proportion has now dropped to less than 70 percent.

He concludes that immigrant earnings in Canada are declining to the lower levels of the United States, where the skill levels of immigrants tend to be lower.

Academic specialists and immigrant advocates say that discrimination is one of many reasons for the problem. Native-born Canadians are better educated now than 25 years ago, so immigrants have more competition, some specialists note. But all agree that professional organizations and provincial licensing agencies have been slow to recognize foreign professional qualifications. The children of immigrants, who enter the job market with Canadian credentials, typically do better at acquiring high-paying jobs, immigration specialists note.

"We have an arcane infrastructure of professional organizations that essentially mitigate against the immediate integration of these highly skilled immigrants," Joe Volpe, the minister of citizenship and immigration, conceded in an interview.

"It's a shame we have a shortage of doctors, and yet we have thousands of foreign trained medical doctors and we don't recognize their credentials," he said. "We haven't found an easy way of assessing their qualifications."

Mr. Volpe said he was concerned that news from disappointed job seekers would seep back to their native countries and discourage qualified people from immigrating. In a recent speech, Mr. Volpe committed more than $250 million over five years to pay for programs to accelerate professional integration. Complaints abound from those caught in this bind - encouraged to come by federal policy, but hamstrung by expensive, time-consuming hurdles created by regulatory agencies and professional organizations.

"Canada advertises that there are no foreigners here, that everyone is at home in this multicultural dream," said Farid A. Hadi, 40, a gynecologist who arrived from Egypt last year and is out of work. He is one of 1,200 applicants for 200 spots in an Ontario program to assess and retain foreign doctors seeking licenses to practice in the province. With his savings disappearing, he is looking for lab work.

"I'll do whatever I need to support my family," he added, referring to his wife and three children.

Mr. Sangha is another example. Since the Canadian Embassy in India and a Canadian immigration consultant encouraged him to bring his family here in 1996, he has not had a single job that fits his qualifications. He would have left Canada long ago, he says, if not for his two children, who have become acclimated to Canada and are now young adults. In 2001, Mr. Sangha was turned down for a job as an environmental inspector with an agency of the Northwest Territories government. He took the case to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, where it is under consideration.

The territorial government agency told the commission that Mr. Sangha had been rejected because he was overqualified and would have become bored. But Mr. Sangha said in an interview that, during his job interview, an agency official had shown crude disrespect by interrupting him and not paying attention to his responses, and that he was the victim of discrimination. "It's a painful life," he said. "I'm angry and frustrated. I never thought it would be like this in Canada."