Thousands of eager immigrants arrive in Canada only to
discover their education and professional credentials are almost
worthless.
It is a great irony to many in the immigration field, and to newcomers
themselves, a bitter joke. Canada has a shortage of skilled
professionals, and yet thousands of internationally trained doctors,
engineers, teachers and nurses are forced to deliver pizzas and drive
taxis.
Some immigrants believe that this is intentional, that Canada wants them
only for their genetic potential. They may sweep floors and clean
offices, but their offspring will be intelligent and creative. Why else
would the government accept them and then make it so very difficult to
have their credentials recognized?
Citizenship and Immigration Canada bristles at such a suggestion, and
advises immigrants to check the ministry's Website, which clearly warns
newcomers there is no guarantee they will find work in their chosen
profession.
Still, frustration is mounting: This week, a British-trained accountant
and his bookkeeper wife launched a lawsuit against the federal
government, alleging that they were misled by immigration officials who
assured them they would find good jobs here. Instead, the couple -- he
is originally from Sri Lanka and she from Malaysia -- have spent five
years in Edmonton shovelling snow, cleaning toilets and borrowing money
to support their teenaged son.
"What angers me is we are capable people. We have the credentials. We
just can't get the jobs," complained Selladurai Premakumaran, who feels
the government has shattered his hopes and dreams.
Last year, when Canada changed the way it selects immigrants, many were
happy to see the end of the old system, which matched newcomers with
worker shortages.
Critics had long complained that, by the time the physiotherapists and
teachers arrived, those jobs had been filled and the labour shortages
were in other fields.
Now, Canada chooses immigrants based not on their occupation, but on
their education, skills and language abilities. Applicants must score 67
of a possible 100 points to be accepted. Ostensibly, being talented and
smart should make them more employable.
But it isn't working out that way. Canada is recruiting the right kind
of people, but they are stuck in a bottleneck, as the agencies and
bodies that regulate the fields of medicine, engineering, teaching and
nursing struggle to assess their qualifications.
"We have a disaster on our hands," says Joan Atlin, executive director
of the Association of International Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.
"There are thousands of un- and under-employed foreign professionals
across the country. At the same time, we have a shortage of skilled
professionals, especially in the health-care field. We don't so much
have a doctor shortage as an assessment and licensing bottleneck."
About 1,300 doctors from more than 80 countries have joined the
association she heads, but she estimates there are many more out there.
Ontario alone may have as many as 4,000, most of them still trying to
get their medical licences.
At the same time, there is a shortage of as many as 3,000 physicians
across the country, especially in smaller communities in Alberta,
British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario (provinces that have been
forced to recruit doctors from South Africa, whose medical training
Canada considers acceptable).
A recent Statistics Canada study of 164,200 immigrants who arrived in
2000 and 2001 found that 70 per cent had problems entering the labour
force. Six in every 10 were forced to take jobs other than those they
were trained to do. The two most common occupational groups for men were
science (natural and applied) and management, but most wound up working
in sales and service or processing and manufacturing.
As well as credentials, there is a problem with supply and demand.
Patrick Coady, with the British Columbia Internationally Trained
Professionals Network, believes that far too many engineers are coming
-- as many as 60 per cent of all those accepted each year. (In Ontario,
from 1997 to 2001, nearly 40,000 immigrants listed engineering as their
occupation.)
"When they arrive, the Engineering Council for Canada evaluates their
credentials, which sets up the engineer to think there are opportunities
here," Mr. Coady says. "Then they discover that each province has a body
that regulates the industry. They need up to 18 months of Canadian work
experience before they will get professional engineering status. And,
there isn't a great need for consulting engineers. A lot of the
infrastructure has already been built in this country."
Michael Wu, a geotechnical engineer from China, is a classic example of
what's happening. Accepted as a landed immigrant last spring, he came
here with his wife and child, leaving behind a relatively prosperous
life in Beijing, and now works for $7 an hour in a Vancouver chocolate
factory.
Back in Beijing, "I had a three-bedroom apartment and took taxis
everywhere -- the Chinese government sent me to build a stadium in St.
Lucia," says Mr. Wu, who has a PhD. "Here, no-one will hire me. Many
engineering companies think engineers make false documents. They are
suspicious of my qualifications. I never imagined I'd end up working in
a factory. But I will keep trying. Every month I go to the Vancouver
Geotechnical Society lecture."
Susan Scarlett of the Immigration Department points out that regulating
the professions is a provincial, not federal, responsibility. "We advise
people who are thinking of coming to Canada to prepare by really
researching how their credentials will be assessed."
Ms. Atlin says that "Canada has been very slow to change. Our regulatory
systems have not caught up with our immigration policies."
But some relief may be on the horizon because the issue has become such
a political flashpoint.
A national task force is about to report to the deputy minister of
health on the licensing of international medical graduates. And this
month Denis Coderre, the federal Immigration Minister, announced that he
wants to streamline the process of recognizing foreign credentials, and
have provinces announce their inventory of needs so Ottawa can work to
fill the shortages.
A doctor 'ready to go anywhere, rural Saskatchewan, small-town Ontario .
. .'
Tina Ureten, a diminutive, well-dressed physician from Turkey, was
always the hardest-working child in a family of hard workers.
She knew from an early age what she wanted to be, and left home to study
science, math and biology at an elite boarding school in Ankara, the
Turkish capital. As a scholarship student, she endured ridicule from her
friends when she chose to spend summer after summer honing her language
skills at a special English-language camp. She aced her university
entrance exams, and was one of 20,000 candidates in a field of 400,000
to be accepted by the nation's medical schools. By 30, she had been
appointed associate professor of nuclear medicine, a hi-tech field that
uses radioactive materials for diagnosis.
Had she stayed in Turkey, she would be at the top of her profession
today, a full professor in a department. Instead, she met a Turkish
engineer at an international conference, and ended up immigrating with
him to Toronto.
Dr. Ureten, now 42, knew it would be difficult to get her medical
licence here. But she didn't know it would be such a bureaucratic,
disheartening and ultimately fruitless journey.
"I sent my application to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons
2˝ years ago, and I haven't even received a response. I worry my file is
lost in a drawer somewhere," she says. "I called my MP and she called
the college, and said they were driving her crazy too.
"I am ready to go anywhere, rural Saskatchewan, small-town Ontario. The
irony is, almost every province has a shortage in nuclear medicine. This
country needs my skills."
When she came here, Dr. Ureten knew she'd have to write exams and was
prepared to retrain. She and her husband sponsored their in-laws to come
and look after their two young children so she could spend her days in
the library studying.
It took her two years to write three of the Medical Council of Canada's
evaluation exams, because there is a six-month gap between exams (not
the case in the United States).
She passed all three tests but wasn't accepted in the medical residency
program. More than 150 people applied for one position in nuclear
medicine, and the odds are stacked against foreign-trained doctors. (In
Ontario, foreign-trained doctors cannot even compete directly for
residency positions open to graduating medical students, but are
restricted to a few specialties in short supply.) There is a separate
stream for foreign-trained doctors, but it has only 125 spaces for
graduates in specific fields -- and nuclear medicine is not one of them.
Dr. Ureten fingers an inch-thick binder, which contains all of her
credentials, carefully translated and annotated. There are her
fellowships at the University of Wisconsin and in Basel, Switzerland;
her training course with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and
dozens of peer-reviewed articles published in international science
journals.
She sent them all off to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in
May, 2001. In the past, the college approved the credentials only of
doctors who trained in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and
England, but two years ago announced a program encouraging all
foreign-trained physicians to send in their documents.
Since then, the college has received 600 applications from more than 140
countries, and approved 60 international medical graduates to take
Canadian exams in their specialties, says its director of education,
Dr.Nadia Mikhael. Dr. Ureten's case is considered "inconclusive," she
says. "This case has taken a long time because we are still waiting for
Turkey to provide evidence so that we can judge the accreditation system
of their postgraduate medical education system.
"We don't want to compromise our Canadian standards. And we have to make
other specialties a priority, like gynecology, anesthesiology and
obstetrics."
Joan Atlin, executive director of the Association of International
Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, says it is misleading for the
college even to invite international physicians to send in their résumés
because it is impossible to assess the programs of hundreds of medical
schools around the world.
She believes a better solution is to assess people on the job. Ontario
recently launched a clearing-house program that would do just this:
assess fully trained foreign graduates during six-month rotations in
hospitals.
"This is the right approach, but it is really just a drop in the
bucket."
And it won't help Dr. Ureten because nuclear medicine, once again, is
not one of the five specialties in the fast-track program.
"I feel like they are making it impossible. There are some authorities
who just don't want foreign doctors in the system," she complains. "I am
ready to go anywhere. There is a need in Canada for people like me,
trained, ready to go."
Between cramming for medical exams, she found time to train as an
ultrasound technician and a medical and cardiac sonographer. Recently,
she opened UC Baby in Mississauga, one of the first clinics in Canada to
offer pregnant couples a three-dimensional ultrasound and real-time
movies of their unborn babies.
"I'm proud of my clinic," she says, "but I still feel I'm overqualified
for this."
She yearns for her true love. "I have met many smart, skilled people
from many countries, and you know what? Many are leaving for the U.S.,
where doctors can more easily be integrated into the system."-- Marina
Jimenez
A need to nurse
Milica Cerovsek, 46, was a nurse in a military hospital in Sarajevo for
more than 17 years: She tended soldiers in the intensive-care unit,
assisted with colonoscopies and tended to all manner of emergencies in
the surgical unit.
She loved her job so much she sometimes volunteered to work double
shifts, forfeiting a night's sleep to nurse patients around the clock,
much to her husband's chagrin.
In 1992, conflict in the region spread to open war, people split on
ethnic lines, and soon the city was under attack. Although an ethnic
Serb, Ms. Cerovsek didn't want to fight; she wanted safety for her two
young children. Using her daughter's illness as a pretext, she fled to
Belgrade to see a skin specialist, knowing she would never return.
Two years later, she arrived in Calgary as a political refugee, and was
soon joined by her husband, a professor of aeronautical engineering. As
well as their homeland, they had lost their family, culture and status
as respected professionals.
Ms. Cerovsek agreed to put her career on hold while her husband, reduced
to delivering pizzas for $7 an hour, went back to school to retrain as
an engineer. In 1997, she finally was able to enter the work force: she
qualified as a massage therapist to pay for the long, arduous process of
becoming a Canadian nurse.
Two years ago, she applied to the Alberta Association of Registered
Nurses, gathering together the documents necessary to complete the
Assessment of Eligibility for Registration. She had to get in touch with
her nursing school in Sarajevo and pay to have transcripts of her marks
sent directly to the AARN.
The association asked her to take a course in English proficiency, and
spend $2,000 on a one-year refresher program in nursing at a community
college. She did both, only to be told she lacked credits in obstetrical
and psychiatric nursing.
"I couldn't believe it. They asked me to go back and do these courses
after all my many years of experience," Ms. Cerovsek says. "They said,
'According to your papers, you lack 35 hours of obstetrical nursing
training in Sarajevo.' But I had thousands of hours of experience
delivering babies, giving injections, assisting doctors in surgery and
doing all kinds of nursing."
Ms. Cerovsek also planned to pursue geriatric nursing, and had no
intention of working in a delivery room, or a psychiatric ward. "I had
to spend several thousand more dollars taking these courses. At that
point, I really felt like giving up because it seemed so bureaucratic."
Donna Hutton, executive director of the AARN, sympathizes but says the
association is responsible for maintaining standards and is working
"with the government and educational institutes to develop bridging
programs for international nurses."
The perseverance that saw Ms. Cerovsek through the upheaval of Sarajevo
is helping her through her marathon quest to become a nurse in a
province that needs them. (Alberta has a shortage and in the next five
years see 10 to 20 per cent of its nurses will reach retirement age.)
She recently completed the two courses and is ready to begin clinical
training and preparing for the national exam. The process has taken four
years, and cost about $6,000.
"I know so many nurses from Sarajevo who would become nurses tomorrow,
but it's too expensive and complicated," she says. "My daughter came
home from school and said, 'There is a huge shortage of nurses. Should I
study nursing?'
"I told her, 'You should only do it if you really love it like I have.'
It's been like my third child and I can't wait to get back to it."
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