All Canadians can benefit from immigration
By Medicine Hat News Opinon on August 29, 2019.
gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade As a society we pride ourselves on being inclusive, multicultural and a community that welcomes immigrants. Those sound good and can even flow off the tongue but the reality can be very different. A recent comment in this paper’s Ticked Off and Tickled Pink feature has someone responding to an individual that must have complained about immigrants “stealing our jobs.” The response was: “These human beings fill positions that most of the whiners born in Canada wouldn’t even apply for.” Perhaps that is precisely the problem. We may be more than happy for immigrants to come here and take jobs at the bottom of the market that Canadians do not want but are not as welcoming when it comes to them taking jobs higher up the ladder. Immigrants are not only people who can’t speak English and have no higher education. There are highly educated people who come as immigrants. Many can speak English and still experience discrimination. A few years ago, when many new immigrants arrived in Medicine Hat, it became clear some had held executive positions in their home country. On several occasions Hatters actually said they hoped these immigrants did not expect to work in a similar position in Canada – because “we do things differently here.” We would all do well to remember that we can benefit from different approaches. Canada may do something in a particular way that we think has worked well and feel no need to change. That can result in us wanting even qualified immigrants to conform to the “Canadian way” of doing things. Perhaps we would benefit from observing a different method and not tossing it out just because it is different. We might discover the other person’s way is actually better. There was a British engineer in Toronto who talked of his experience all over the world but when he went for a job interview in Toronto they focused on his lack of experience on a particular diameter of pipe. He had to point out that he had plenty of experience in pipes bigger than that and so was well qualified. Talk to immigrants in general and they will tell you their lack of “Canadian experience” is one of the big hurdles that holds them back especially in the early days as an immigrant. We often denigrate the U.S. for creating a “melting pot” where immigrants assimilate, put their own background behind, and embrace being American. We boast about Canada encouraging immigrants to retain their own culture and identity. If we appreciate immigrants then don’t only think about them filling the jobs Canadians don’t want to do. (Gillian Slade is a News reporter. To comment on this and other editorials, go to https://www.medicinehatnews.com/opinions, email her at gslade@medicinehatnews.com or call her at 403-528-8635.) 18-17
