Immigrant nurses face new hurdles with Ontario’s licensing changes

2014/11/13 Leave a comment

Another example of foreign credential recognition challenges. Given that the certification  is test scenario-based, expect that the main challenge is not technical but contextual and related to how one interacts with patients and colleagues.

But the lack of appropriate training and feedback should be addressed:

The report, released this summer, found that “some internationally educated applicants do not receive adequate explanation about their shortcomings on the OSCE.” And since there are no appeals or repeat tests allowed, “it leaves applicants with no option but to proceed to bridging education if they wish to continue with their RN application,” the report says.

“It is unclear why, regardless of the number of gaps identified in the OSCE, applicants who want to proceed with their RN application must take an entire bridging program. There is no sound justification for the ‘one size fits all’ approach.”

The college said it brought in the OSCE test for foreign RN applicants because it is an objective tool to evaluate competencies.“

It is not an ‘exam’ in the usual sense of the world. It is a holistic assessment of the applicant’s knowledge and experience. . . . They come out of it with a better understanding of which missing competencies they need to address,” said Clarke.

“It’s like getting a second opinion about how well an applicant’s education and experience match the competencies required of a nurse in Ontario.”

Immigrant nurses face new hurdles with Ontario’s licensing changes | Toronto Star.

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Conservative ‘barbaric practices’ bill panders to fear of immigrants: Walkom

2014/11/10 Leave a comment

Tom Walkom on the Government’s pandering to its base:

As justification for his bill, Alexander cited the case of Mohammad Shafia, an Afghan immigrant who, along with his wife and son, killed three of his daughters and the girls’ stepmother.

What the minister didn’t point out is that all three killers received the maximum sentence — life in prison.

“The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honour . . . that has absolutely no placed in any civilized society,” the judge said at sentencing.

Not much leniency there.

In another case cited by Alexander this week, it’s hard to know what the judge will say. The alleged wife-killer has not yet gone to trial.

This inconvenient fact didn’t stop the minister from publicly declaring the recent immigrant from Afghanistan guilty of an honour killing. It’s the second time this year that Alexander has preemptively convicted this particular man. The first was in a March speech for Toronto’s Canadian Club.

It is true that Canada does not tolerate practices more common in other countries. Americans who want to come to Canada must give up their handguns. Chinese billionaires, if they wish to settle here, may have only one spouse apiece. Murdering wives and daughters — for any reason — is just not on.

But laws in these areas already exist. With the exceptions noted above, Alexander’s bill does not add anything helpful. In the guise of protecting women it takes potshots at Muslim immigrants. Its motives are crassly political.

Perhaps the title of the bill could be changed from “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act” to “Craven Pandering to the Conservative Base and anti-Muslim Sentiment.”

Conservative ‘barbaric practices’ bill panders to fear of immigrants: Walkom | Toronto Star.

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Feds brace for backlash against new immigration rules (against polygamy, forced marriages)

2014/11/07 Leave a comment

Apart from the silly and pandering name (Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act), and whether in its application it will make much of a difference, or provide effective new powers, hard to disagree with the overall intent and principles behind the Bill.

After all, the case mentioned by Alexander, the Shafia murders (Shafia jury finds all guilty of 1st-degree murder), were successfully prosecuted under existing laws:

The bill would amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, making permanent residents or temporary residents inadmissible if they practice polygamy in Canada.

The bill would also amend the Civil Marriage Act to ban marriage for anyone under the age of 16.

It also changes the Criminal Code to impose a maximum five-year prison term on anyone who “celebrates, aids or participates” in a marriage rite or ceremony knowing that one of the persons is being married against their will, or is not of legal age.

Alexander noted the case of an Afghan immigrant accused of stabbing his wife to death last year, apparently because he felt dishonoured by her independence.

He cited another case in which an Afghan-Canadian man, his second wife and their son were convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of his three teenaged daughters and his first wife — also because he felt they were bringing dishonour on the family by dating or dressing in ways he found offensive.

“Honour-based killings are nothing more than murders,” Alexander said.“We will be working through this bill to make sure that such killings are considered the murders that we know them to be. There is absolutely no room for ambiguity.”

But I don’t buy the argument that countries like the UAE are likely to protest. Most immigrants from the Gulf are guest workers, not citizens, and given their own restrictions and the bad publicity, unlikely to be an issue.

Better reporting on how these measures would be implemented and enforced would be more useful.

Feds brace for backlash against new immigration rules.

More substantive reporting here:

But some immigration lawyers are questioning the need for the new legislation, saying they are aware of few cases of polygamy among immigrants to Canada and don’t see early and forced marriage as a pervasive concern.

Immigration lawyer Joel Sandaluk said the polygamy portion of the bill was particularly puzzling because the practice is already illegal in Canada. He said the legislation seems to be aimed at individuals who were married in another country before arriving in Canada, but added that he believes their numbers are relatively few.

After practising immigration law in Canada for 15 years, he said he’s never come across the issue. “It’s just something that’s completely outside of my experience as an immigration lawyer,” he said.

Mr. Sandaluk said he also wasn’t aware of a particular concern with the ability to prosecute forced marriages, and pointed to the language of the announcement and the term “barbaric cultural practices” as evidence that the government is targeting a specific subset of the population.

“What the government I think is doing is sending a political message with this legislation,” he said. “And I think this is better considered posturing rather than policy.”

Experts question use of bill banning immigrants in polygamous marriages

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Australians support immigration and multiculturalism

2014/10/30 Leave a comment

CIC Tracking - Support for ImmigrationComparable to Canadian levels of support (see chart above):

The study titled 2014s Mapping Social Cohesion report by Scanlon Foundation which surveyed over 24,000 people reported strong public support for immigration intake and the benefits of multiculturalism. ”

Australia’s public sentiment toward immigration intake is possibly the most positive in the western world. In 2014, 58 per cent of people agree that the immigration intake is about right or too low. Just 35 per cent of people consider that the immigration intake is too high,” the Foundation said in a statement.

“This level of public support is somewhat surprising in the context of rising unemployment and other economic concerns, as well as international comparisons,” said report author Andrew Markus of Monash University.

“In 2014, American and European surveys have found disapproval of immigration in the range of 60 to 75 per cent,” he said.

Support for multiculturalism was also high at 85 percent (“been good for Australia”) but discrimination remains an issue with some 18 percent of respondents reporting experience of discrimination.

Australians support immigration and multiculturalism: Study – The Economic Times.

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Hong Kong press scorn Canada’s backdoor wealthy immigrant scheme

2014/10/24 Leave a comment

More on the abuse of the immigrant investor program. Nothing new (see Martin Collacott: The citizenship fire sale – National Post, Under new rules, rich Chinese should learn French if they want to move to Canada | South China Morning Post) but confirmation of bad and naive program design, led more by the political level of previous governments rather than evidence-based from the bureaucracy:

Most of the 30,000 rich Chinese who have recently moved to British Columbia told authorities they would settle elsewhere in Canada, with the deception costing the province access to billions of dollars in loans.

An investigation by the South China Morning Post revealed the widespread illicit practice, which is demonstrated in a huge discrepancy between approval and arrival numbers of Chinese in BC under the Immigrant Investor Programme IIP. The Post’s revelations come as Ottawa prepares to unveil a wealth migration scheme to replace the federal IIP, which was axed in June.

The huge influx of rich Chinese is already a hotly debated issue in Vancouver, which has seen property prices soar.From 2005 to 2012, a total of 29,764 rich Chinese, mostly from the mainland but also from Taiwan and Hong Kong, are known to have moved to BC under the program, which required applicants to loan Canada C$800,000 HK$5.54 million per family and have minimum assets of C$1.6 million.

Yet in the same period, only 13,872 certificates of permanent residency were issued to applicants from greater China who nominated BC as their intended destination.

Ian Young found that 53 per cent of the 29,764 investor immigrants from the mainland, Hong Kong or Taiwan who activated their permanent residency in British Columbia from 2005 to 2012 did so after telling authorities they would live in a different province.

This suggests at least 53 per cent of all Chinese known to have settled in BC under the IIP said they planned to live elsewhere.

Hong Kong press scorn Canada’s backdoor wealthy immigrant scheme | Vancouver Sun.

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Statistical black hole opens door to foreign workers

2014/10/21 Leave a comment

While more of a “footnote” in relation to some of the broader concerns regarding the Temporary Foreign Workers, an important one given the need to increase employment opportunities for aboriginal peoples. Paras below indicate the difference that including reserves make in the calculations:

In the Prince Albert and northern Saskatchewan economic region, for example, the unemployment rate for 2013 was 5.7 per cent. That’s just low enough to meet the government’s cutoff. As a result, employers in Prince Albert are still able to hire TFWs for low-skill jobs. A government list obtained by The Globe under access to information laws shows several businesses in Prince Albert, which has a large aboriginal population, employ a high proportion of TFWs. Two restaurant owners in the area who spoke to The Globe recently said they prefer to hire TFWs because they consider them more reliable than Canadian workers.

But if reserves were included in the calculations, it’s clear the unemployment rate for the region would be much higher than 6 per cent. The 2006 long-form census data, which offers some of the only reliable data on joblessness on reserves, shows nearly 2,600 people living on 35 area First Nations declared themselves unemployed. The average unemployment rate on those reserves was nearly 30 per cent. In a region where roughly 100,000 people are employed, adding on-reserve First Nations to the equation would increase the jobless rate by at least two percentage points, well into high unemployment territory.

Statistical black hole opens door to foreign workers – The Globe and Mail.

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Don’t make the mistake of migrating to Canada, it’s a fool’s paradise – Newseastwest: Indian diaspora, Bollywood

2014/10/20 4 Comments

A bad experience, not unique. But balanced against better opportunities for one’s children is likely the calculation of many:

My advice to people who are itching to migrate to Canada to give a better future to their children is this: Think hard before you take any decision and don’t fool yourself by painting a rosy picture in your head. You may end up working in factories, call centers, security agencies, Tim Horton’s or packing factories. You will lose your savings. Your will lose your morale and self-esteem. Tensions will destroy your marital and family life. Finally, if you are lucky enough, you may get an entry-level job and then pay someone else’s mortgage while living in their basement as you dream of buying your own little nest.

And buying your little nest in a hurry with your saved money could be your worst mistake, for God forbid if you are laid off, as it happened to my dear friend, who will pay the mortgage? Your house dream will collapse and you will be buried under it.

And if you do get a job – which most probably you won’t enjoy doing, but you will do it anyways to survive and pay the mortgage – you will end up wasting the prime of your life paying back the mortgage. It is not worth it, believe me.

Our struggle for survival continues to this day. We don’t know when we will wind up this fruitless venture and head back to India. This is the story of many immigrants to Canada.

Don’t make the mistake of migrating to Canada, it’s a fool’s paradise – Newseastwest: Indian diaspora, Bollywood.

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Montreal’s French invasion: Why immigrants from France are moving in en masse

2014/10/15 Leave a comment

Quebec as immigration destination of choice for French citizens (according to Immigration Quebec, about 8 percent of immigrants to Quebec originate in France):

“There was a sense of freedom – from family, and from France, which is much more traditional and hierarchical,” said Juilliard, now a freelance writer who runs the popular lifestyle blog Une parisienne a Montréal.

“I felt you could be much more yourself here than in France, and not feel the judgment of others, and even if there is judgment, it’s not necessarily negative.”

It’s unclear how many of these new arrivals will stay for the long haul.

Over the past decade, 30,000 immigrants from France have gained permanent resident status in Quebec, according to the consulate, far below the total number here on temporary student and work-travel visas. But it’s still among the top immigrant countries of origin in Quebec, alongside Algeria, Morocco, China and Haiti.

Edith Courtial, who moved to Montreal this summer with her partner, said she has no plans to leave any time soon. Courtial has a degree in hotel management but said she feels less restricted by educational background in Canada.

“In France, when you’re looking for work, you’re really tied to your diploma,” said Courtial, originally from the south of France.

Montreal’s French invasion: Why immigrants from France are moving in en masse – The Globe and Mail.

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Ottawa slow to monitor temporary foreign worker program compliance

2014/10/11 Leave a comment

Not exactly inspiring confidence in government management and pre-dates the current government which, to its credit, started monitoring:

Before 2010, not a single government worker was responsible for monitoring compliance with the program, even as about 200 federal employees processed employers’ applications to bring in foreign workers.

Records show that it was not until 2010 that the federal government assigned staff to monitor the program and investigate potential violations. The number rose from 24 to 29 the next year and then dropped to 14 in 2012 and 2013 before rising to 43 in 2014.

Ottawa slow to monitor temporary foreign worker program compliance – The Globe and Mail.

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Changes to live-in caregiver program won’t solve backlog, groups fear – Politics – CBC News

2014/10/10 Leave a comment

More shadow boxing on upcoming changes to the live-in caregivers program:

[Minister] Alexander acknowledged the growing need for more caregivers and nannies across the country.

“Canada needs caregivers … but we need them, and I think caregivers are the first to recognize this, in a broader range of occupations than ever before.

“Some in the traditional role of helping with young children at home. Others, helping with medical need situations in homes. And then in institutions as well where there are a wide variety of needs, professional needs, highly-skilled needs that aren’t necessarily being met anywhere close to the scale needed in many parts of the country,” Alexander said.

Employment Minister Jason Kenney was more critical of the caregiver program in June saying it had morphed into a family reunification program.

NDP immigration critic Lysanne Blanchette-Lamothe criticized the government for its “lack of transparency.”

“They’ve hinted at changes, while vilifying certain communities they claim are abusing the program, without providing any evidence. “They’ve refused to hold public and open consultations and have excluded important advocates and experts from their closed-door consultations,” Blanchette-Lamothe said in a written statement to CBC News.

Changes to live-in caregiver program wont solve backlog, groups fear – Politics – CBC News.

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