"A certain result of the deprecation of international experience construed as 'Canadian inexperience' is the loss of international expertise due to an irrational insistence on a Canadian experience that is unavailable at the point of entry. Stories abound of immigrant specialists like surgeons, teachers, accountants and editors, being forced, in a desperate bid to earn a living, into occupations beneath their skill levels and outside and below their areas of expertise. A consequence is the irony that an immigration system specifically designed to attract the highly skilled into a knowledge economy inadvertently encourages an erosion of knowledge. Immigration becomes a revolving door through which knowledge enters and exits almost immediately. This is nothing other than reverse immigration. It is a situation in which demographic gains in immigration numbers and added skills are lost due to their not being infused into the economic system or because people are forced to return to their countries of origin or immigrate further."
- Amatoritsero Ede, in the Maple Tree Literary Supplement
Interesting editorial. Is this really the sum of the immigrant experiene? I wonder if it is more complicated than this. If the West is maltreating immigrants, immgrants have a strange way of showing it. We come here and we stay and prosper through it. Yes, many of us do. We can't have it both ways; complain about brain drain - and then complain about Canada or the West refusing to acculturate or assimilate us, whatever is the politically correct term these days (the cloying lingo of "multiculturlism, SMH).
Should Canada ensure that her doctors are really doctors? I hope so. Let's face it, it is in the interest of every nation to ensure that those that claim to be professionals are indeed qualified to do what they claim they can do. If you can't write, and you have a PhD, then any nation should prevent you from inflicting abuse on students. If you are a glorified butcher with a medical degree, you should only be in a hospital as a patient, etc... In a way, a rigorous certification process might put other nations on notice that they should not be merely diploma mills, especially in today's world where any dolt with a credit card can bag a degree from the Internet, just like that.
The good news is that many immigrants thrive and become productive in their host countries and useful to their home countries. If Canada is putting in place policies that deliberately discriminate against immigrants, shame on her and she should be called on it, but the editorial does not give specifics about what exactly is making Ede anxious. Short of evidence, the editorial comes across as merely supercilious. And I am a fan of Ede's editorials, I just didn't feel this one...
Enjoy...
- Ikhide
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