WHY THE WORLD'S BEST AND BRIGHTEST STRUGGLE TO FIND JOBS IN CANADA

WHY THE WORLD'S BEST AND BRIGHTEST STRUGGLE TO FIND JOBS IN CANADA

Tamsin McMahon

Why do skilled immigrants often fare worse here than in the U.S. and U.K.?

For a time, Sanjay Mavinkurve and wife Samvita Padukone were held up as poster children for Canada’s open and flexible immigration system, long touted for the benefits it brings to both the country and its newcomers. When the couple married in 2008, Mavinkurve born in India, raised in Saudi Arabia and trained at Harvard University was living in Silicon Valley, where he led a team of engineers designing Google maps for mobile phones. Padukone was working in finance at Singapore’s largest investment bank. Mavinkurve’s temporary U.S. work visa didn’t allow his wife to work in the States. So Google arranged to transfer Mavinkurve to the company’s office in Toronto, where Padukone, with degrees in engineering and finance and experience in international banking, hoped to land a job.

Their story inspired a flurry of alarmist news coverage south of the border on how America’s overly bureaucratic immigration system was putting the country’s economic future at risk. Profiles in the Canadian media, meanwhile, pictured the young couple in the typical new immigrant pose: sitting on the couch of their threadbare downtown Toronto apartment, smiling beneath a Canadian flag.

In the end, their story turned out to be less a picture of the Canadian dream than an image of the ugly reality facing so many Canadian immigrants. Padukone struggled to find a job. Calls to employers went unreturned or recruiters told her she would need Canadian work experience to qualify. With extended family already living in Canada, the couple expected a slow start, but was shocked by how difficult life here turned out to be. “I was trying to deny these thoughts in my head that my wife wasn’t facing these issues,” says Mavinkurve. “But then I’d see the taxi drivers with the Ph.D.s and the ads on TV saying, ‘hire a skilled immigrant.’ ”

In late 2009, the couple packed up and moved to Seattle, where Padukone, finally armed with a U.S. work permit, landed the first job she applied for: at Amazon’s head office. Their short time living in Canada taught the couple a lot about what it’s like to immigrate to Canada and, says Mavinkurve, it’s “not what any Canadian wants to hear.” “Canada is, by and large, not friendly to immigrants,” he says.

Canada’s “points system,” the first such system in the world, was designed to build a multicultural society based on selecting those with the kinds of broad, transferable skills that would ensure the long-term economic success. But in recent decades it has had the opposite effect. Even as Canada has worked diligently to attract the world’s most educated workers, the country has witnessed a dramatic decline in the economic welfare of its most skilled immigrants. It’s a decline other countries nations far less welcoming to highly skilled immigrants than Canada have managed to avoid.

In 1970, men who immigrated to Canada earned about 85 per cent of the wages of Canadian-born workers, rising to 92 per cent after a decade in the country. By the late 1990s, they earned just 60 per cent, rising to 78 per cent after 15 years, according to Statistics Canada studies. These days, university-educated newcomers earn an average of 67 per cent of their Canadian-born, university-educated counterparts.

That deterioration is even more severe since recent immigrants are far more educated and experienced than in previous generations. Between 2000 and 2007, nearly 80 per cent of skilled workers who immigrated to Canada had a university degree, compared to about 25 per cent for the Canadian-born population, reports Statistics Canada. By far the largest gap in wages between immigrants and Canadian-born workers was among those with university degrees. Nearly half of chronically poor immigrants living in Canada are those who have come as skilled workers.

The implications for the country are huge, given that Canada has one of the highest rates of immigration in the world and attracts far more skilled immigrants than most other Western countries. Economic migrants those chosen because they’re thought to have the kinds of skills that can boost a country’s economy represent roughly half of all Canadian immigrants, compared to around 16 per cent in the U.S. The declining economic welfare of immigrants is “a huge problem,” says Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

It’s Impossible To Calculate The Opportunity Cost Of Productivity, The Cost To Our Economy, Represented By The Unemployment And Underemployment Of Immigrants.