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Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
Honestly, it is a little bit of both. I will admit, the credentials issue is a big one, especially with doctors (and probably the most important one). I am backing off on that a little, at least as in pertains to doctors and some other professionals.
I was participating in a discussion about this on another forum a couple of years ago and recall reading data that said something like 75% of immigrants choose to live in either Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver despite data that suggested the other 25% of immigrants earned much more money and had half the unemployment rate (it was something like 12% to 6%). The biggest factors drawing immigrants were; big city attractions, proximity to similar ethnic communities, and climate. Access to jobs was not the main issue. This behaviour is not helping Canada meet it's labour needs through immigration. You don't need to put 2 and 2 together to realize that many immigrants accept unemployment and/or underemployment in the big cities instead of moving to where the jobs are.
I would love to see an increase of work visas with geographic restrictions, while making eventual citizenship for those with those visas easier.
I am too lazy to search for the original data and acedemic sources, but these stories are based on the same information:
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazett...6-6ef059d3c12c
http://canadianimmigrant.ca/immigran...-when-settling
http://eae.alberta.ca/documents/WIA/WIA-EN_Toolbox.pdf |
While the first two articles you posted do show advantages for immigrants living in smaller cities they don't suggest there is a problem of new immigrants refusing to live in smaller cities of Canada. They do suggest lack of awareness on the part of immigrants to advantages of living in smaller cities, the lack of recognition for their qualifications and a mismatch between the qualifications of new immigrants and the skills needed in these communities. None of those factors are people arriving and simply refusing to go where they can find work and make a life.
Here a couple of quotes from the first two articles you posted worth considering.
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The larger, more important context for immigrants is that they are arriving in Canada more highly skilled than those who arrived several decades ago, Foura said. And yet they face a crisis that is present in both urban and non-urban areas: employers' refusal to recognize academic credentials or work experience abroad.
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In recent years, there’s been a disconnect in the type of immigrants arriving to Canada and where they settle, he says, “resulting in 4,000 people coming to the [Hamilton] area each year, who are lured to Canada by the red-carpet promises of the Ottawa immigration bureaucrats only to hit the wall of the provincial and local resettlement funding limitations. And a shifting local economy, ill equipped and disinclined to absorb hundreds of foreign-trained specialists.”
Khayutin says that, according to a 2005 study, the Hamilton area in between 1996 and 2005 received 1,283 foreign trained engineers, 217 immigrants who were university professors in their source country and 204 scientists.
“Everyone knows we are the ‘Steel City.’ Yet only 60 immigrants, who came to settle in Hamilton during the said nine-year period, identified themselves as ‘workers’ or ‘journeymen,’” he says. “Hamilton, as many other places in the province, and in the country, is thirsting for a suitable workforce.
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Now I admit I haven't read the entirety of that 80 page article you posted last (have you?), but from what I have read it seems to be addressing the need for these communities to inform and attract immigrants to opportunities in their communities. It's targeting what communities can do to make immigrants know about them and to make themselves more attractive and supportive to immigrants.
Smaller cities certainly should be promoted as good places for more new immigrants to live. It's the responsibility of the government and local industries to participate in that kind of promotion as you certainly wouldn't expect a new immigrant to have ever even heard of most cities in Canada outside the major centers. It's also crucial to ensure people arriving in Canada have opportunities for work that are suitable and that qualifications can get some recognition.
The PNP programs do appear to be attempting to address these problems. That is important, but there has been uncertainty surrounding these programs as policy changes have stopped certain programs or parts of programs and it's not clear what processes are safe to commit to. Kenney being in his position and the actions that he's taken since being there makes it hard to be certain about what is and is not going to happen with Canadian immigration processes. That's a disadvantage for Canada when trying to attract people who are considering the very long process of immigration. Many potential immigrants who could come to Canada are just the type of people that can help a country to prosper and as a result they are able to choose among great countries to move to, to work/do business in and to raise their families in. Canada should be trying to be the number one choice among countries for people to immigrate to. Uncertainty/unreliability about something as important as the legal processes controlling a family's future is not good for Canada's reputation and is, in my opinion, also rather un-Canadian in how unfriendly an impression it creates.
