Skilled Immigrants and Work: What exactly is "Canadian Experience"?

With current immigration reforms in the United States focusing on skilled immigrants and highly educated candidates in the new Senate Bill on Immigration, a comparison between another North American immigration system that deals with skilled labour and educated immigration candidates may shed some light on possible issues with future US immigration policy.

In the neighbouring Canadian Immigration system there have been many issues concerning the rights for many skilled immigrants to work in Canada. Many newcomers to Canada have been "headhunted" with very high levels of education to immigrate to Canada. Many have been recruited and given priority in an immigration points system which values education and skills, but also has an epidemic of unemployment for many of those professional people coming to Canada.

Journalist Steve Paiken reproduces an audio version of his May 7th broadcast interviewing officials and people from the most numerous immigration groups in Canada. Issues surrounding how the theory of "Canadian Experience" and the fairness of such an arbitrary measure as a determinant of the abilities of an employee are discussed. With more than 50% of the resident population of Canada's largest city being foreign born, the role of professional immigrants in many larger Canadian cities require a certain level of rights to work with restrictions which are not anti-competitive in their nature. The issue is exacerbated with a shortage of skilled labour in medical and certain engineering fields. Its effect is said to contribute to the wait times for access to health care in the Canadian Public Health system, and even has the effect of losing more than $1 Billion from the Canadian economy each year.

To hear a thorough discussion in Audio, please listen to the show's two audio broadcasts on the link page at Steve Paiken: The Agenda.

Links: 

• Access to Professions and Trades in Ontario
• Ontario Immigration – Global Experience Ontario – An Access and Resource Centre for the Internationally Trained
• Stats Canada – Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada
• Stats Canada – Immigrants' perspectives on their first four years in Canada: Highlights from three waves of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada