Highly educated immigrants fare better in U.S. than Canada

     New research shows that university-educated immigrants in Canada earn significantly less than those in the States. The statistics from this research may prove to be a problem for Canada, a country built upon the attraction of bright individuals from around the world. Specifically, the research shows that highly educated recent immigrants find that their earnings are very low when compared to their Canadian-born counter-parts; those born in Canada of the same background earn about 50% more. In the States, this gap is lowered to a safe 30%.This, however, was not the case in 1980, when those of high education that immigrated to Canada received earnings on par with those born in Canada. The study's author, Aneta Bonikowska of Statistics Canada say that immigrant fortunes in the two countries started to divide in the 1990s; however the reason for this diversion is still elusive. Some suggested possibilities that caused this diversion may be that there are more immigrants going to Canada than the U.S, this causes limited supply.

     Mr.Bonikowska says that Canada has been accepting a much larger percentage of university-educated immigrants than in the past. In 1980, around 20 per cent of the immigrants were university- educated and in 2005, around 55 per cent of immigrants are university-educated. However, this climb is much slower in the U.S, only 35 per cent of their immigrants are university-educated in 2005. Canada's source countries for immigrants have also changed significantly, as Asian immigrants slowly replace those from Europe. In 2005, 80% of the immigrants that came to Canada neither spoke French nor English. The most troubling stat from this research is that this gap has been present ever since 1960. This new study suggest that becoming more Canadian held the key to finding work in Canada. Wei Chen is an example of an university-educated immigrant that came to Canada and was disappointed with the results he had with work. However, after enrolling in an one-year program in career counselling and landing a job as a career coach, he has had much success. As someone not native to Canada, we have our advantages, and that is we represent our own culture and help organizations reach a common goal, Wei Chen says.

     This article really illustrates the struggle that immigrants go through when they first arrive in Canada. Many of these immigrants, by immigrating to Canada, are throwing away everything they have in their homeland; they are sacrificing their jobs that they worked so hard for. Literally, Canada is just the opposite of what many think it is, when people plan to start over in Canada, they think that the living conditions will be so much better. However, life in Canada is especially hard for new immigrants because they have just arrived in an unfamiliar place with nothing to work it; it also doesn't help when Canada makes it so hard for immigrants to find jobs. What often starts out as excitement to start all over becomes a living hell for these immigrants, they are being treated unfairly. Canada is not paying them enough for what they are worth, why do two people of the same education-level but coming from different places have different amount of earnings? This is extremely unfair for those who have thrown away their lives back at home in order to come here. What's more is that Canada advertises themselves for these skilled workers to come, and once they arrive, Canada starts treating them badly. I think this is extremely unfair to the immigrants because of the ordeal that Canadian life is putting on them. I think that keeping to your words is very important and if you can't even commit to that, then there is no point in advertising in the first place.