From Scratch

Meet Kuman, an Indian immigrant to Canada, who has a masters degree in Film production and animation from a reputed institute in South India, now working as an agent in a run-of-the-mill call center in the suburbs of Toronto. Kuman was working on different projects of Diamond Comics Pvt. Ltd., the largest comic book publisher and distributor in India. Marvel comics located his talent and offered him a project in the U.S. After working with Marvel for almost eight months, when the project was scrapped, Kuman found it difficult to give up on his American dreams and as securing a Green card became increasingly difficult, Kuman immigrated to Canada (thanks to the easy enticement of Canadian PR)* but soon realized that worse times were just about to begin.

After hunting for jobs for over six months, he was finally accepted at a call center as an agent, thanks to other sympathetic South Asians working there as team leads. Currently, he answers client queries over the phone and sells insurance to prospective customers, and is somehow managing to survive on $1,600 per month. He is far from the life he deserves and even farther away from his dreams and with his future appearing dimmer with each passing day, he is now thinking of giving up and returning to his old city of Chennai.

Shruchi was a lecturer in the western Indian province of Gujarat. She had post graduated at the top of her class, cleared a very competitive National Eligibility Test (NET) in India and had secured the much coveted position in a government college. However, by way of marriage she had to relocate to Canada and is currently working as a sales person at Walmart.

Kuman and Shruchi are just two out of the hundreds of South Asian immigrants who come to Canada every year in pursuit of a better living. And although Canada welcomes new migrants with valuable skills and qualifications hospitably, often one is disillusioned by the discrimination that is largely at work at every level of employment and in each profession of worth in this country.

A research by Michael Ornstein has shown that low average earnings among recent immigrants in Toronto are affected by the very low earnings among some particularly disadvantaged racial groups. And the two groups are notably blacks and South Asians.

Here I quote from a recent article to Canadian Council on Social development, written by Andrew Jackson :

"The vast majority of working-age immigrants are actively seeking jobs, and the major reasons for their very high poverty rates are the barriers they face in finding employment in stable, reasonably well-paying jobs. The fundamental problem is not a lack of skills. As a group, foreign-born visible minorities are more highly educated than the Canadian average across all age groups. For example, 35% of immigrants aged 25 to 34 have a university degree, compared to the Canadian average of 26%, and high school completion rates are the same.

However, unemployment rates for visible minority immigrants were significantly higher than the average in 1995, and the gaps were largest among the most highly educated groups. The visible minority immigrants who were able to find jobs were over-represented in low-paying, manual, sales or services jobs - 30% vs. 21% - and they were significantly under-represented, not in professional or managerial jobs, but rather in intermediate-skilled manual and technical jobs.

This occupational segregation results in very large earnings differentials. In 1995, visible minority immigrants who were employed full-time for a full year earned just $32,000, compared to the comparable Canadian average of $38,000. And this comparison does not take into account the much higher levels of employment in precarious jobs and periods of unemployment over the year."

Therefore the study makes it quite clear that getting your "dream job" will be quite impossible in Canada, unless you upgrade your qualification with some Canadian degree specific to the field you are interested to work in. In fact, www.migrationnews.com makes this quite clear with the following "Don't-s" for immigrants on their website:

• Don’t expect a job at the same level or higher than you had overseas. You may lack Canadian local knowledge and may need to take a step back in order to advance later. Wait one year.
• Don’t expect the same salary or more than you had overseas.
• Don’t expect a job offer in the first week. On average, it can take native Canadians 1 - 8 weeks to find a new job.

 It is no wonder then that each year about 35% of the immigrants who were doing well in their home country, especially in 3rd world countries, return home and not settle in Canada. And although it is true that a small percentage of such immigrants return home to take advantage of the parity between home currency and Canadian Dollar (1 dollar in Canada = 45 rupees in India), majority return because they would need to upgrade qualifications for just any profession. Even for a receptionist's job or that of a security guard, one would need to have a degree in administrative support work or at least some Canadian High school degree and a license respectively. And to top this, 80% of the jobs get filled through networking.

My dear fellow migrant, I will recount the story of another immigrant here, not to discourage you, but to prepare you for the odds that you may face, should you chance to fall on the high waves of Canadian job market in the near future:

One Wednesday, I met an Indian lady at the grocery store. She was struggling with her shopping bags when I offered to help. She turned out to be my neighbor and after a few days we met at a nearby coffee shop and began talking about our lives in Canada. She had completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Bombay and had thereafter married a doctor of medicine settled in Canada. Unfortunately, before coming to Canada, she had assumed that her high qualifications would make job hunting in Canada an easy task. However, she was proved wrong by the Canadian job market which could not accommodate her even in the most mundane occupations. At first she tried to take up a teaching  position in schools and colleges. But the lack of Canadian college education and/or a teaching certificate from Toronto District School Board rendered securing a job in the education industry impossible for her. Next she tried getting research oriented jobs and even entry level clerical  positions; but there again she was obstructed. Despite sending out scores of applications, she was never contacted by any employer. Finally she tried getting work at local cafeterias and clothe stores. But even there her lack of experience as a barista or sales person impeded. She always seemed to be either under qualified or over and therefore useless. Hence, after repeated attempts for almost one and half years, she called it quits and took up the best alternative that she could- that of mothering. At the moment she is in her final trimester and doing well by God's grace. Luckily for her Canadian  (born) child, these struggles will remain unknown!

 * Permanent Resident status for Canada, equivalent to Green Card for America