Nick Noorani Website

We were told to sit in the kitchen and each given a glass of cold water.  We were given a newspaper to search for places to live, while the professor and his family ate dinner in the dining room.” Patricia Wollesen tells the story of her first encounter with Canadian hospitality; she speaks with sharp tones as she recounts how her family was snubbed by more established families.  She immigrated to Canada from Germany in the 1980s when her husband was offered a professorship in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto.  She abandoned her own comfortable profession – working one-on-one with disabled children – to come to a new, cold, and variably hospitable country.  Fortunately for her family, after this initial experience, a more generous Canadian citizen lent them housing until they could secure an apartment of their own.

Wollesen’s story is not unique and represents the experience of many professionals that have immigrated to Canada.  All too often, professors, engineers, doctors, and other learned immigrants have to struggle to be recognized as qualified professionals by their Canadian peers.  They also fight to be accepted and welcomed in their new communities.

Nick Noorani, the founder and publisher of The Canadian Immigrant, a magazine for newcomers to Canada, says that Wollesen and her family might have been more warmly received than others.  Noorani came to Canada in 1998 from Dubai and quickly established himself as a successful entrepreneur and advocate for new immigrants.  “It started when I came to Canada, and I said that there was so much that immigrants needed and it was just not there,” he says about how he got involved in immigrant issues.

“In 2003, I had what I call my epiphany,” claims Noorani. “I woke up at 3:00 am one morning and said, ‘Everyone says Canada is a country of immigrants.  There are magazines for welding broken furniture and for daffodils, but you don’t have a magazine for immigrants’.”  He did some research and found that one in five Canadians were born outside Canada.  With that market niche in mind, Noorani started The Canadian Immigrant to share success stories, tips, and other relevant information.

“Last year, we started for the first time Canada’s Top 25 Immigrant Awards,” says Noorani about The Canadian Immigrant.  “Canada is a country of immigrants, but there is no national award for immigrants.  So I said, ‘We can start an award that recognizes immigrants!’”  The awards were a great success, gathering nominations from every province and most of the territories.  About 10,000 people participated in the voting and the top immigrants in the country were recognized with distinction.  During the awards ceremony, a young Chinese girl ran up to Noorani and said, “You have no idea what a difference you have made to my life.  I have been in Canada for five years, and for five years I have read every single issue of your magazine.”

Despite his ups and downs, Noorani has done better than most university educated immigrants, who usually have to work for a decade before reaching the same income levels as their Canadian-born peers.  Furthermore, immigrants in Canada are twice as likely to fall into poverty, and many never recover.  Some would say that for a country that prides itself on its multiculturalism, Canada fails to facilitate the entrance of talented immigrants who offer valuable skills and expertise.

“We are very much aware that there are people that come into the province with very high qualifications that are not able to put those skills to use,” says Michel Payen-Dumont, a spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration.  “Unfortunately, some people encounter challenges.  We have all heard stories about doctors who end up driving cabs, and that does not do anybody any good.”  Payen-Dumont explains that the government does its best to ensure that the skills of foreigners are recognized and applied as soon as immigrants arrive in Canada.  “If they come with high qualifications, they should be able to work in their own field, for their own satisfaction.  If they succeed, Ontario succeeds as well.”

For many immigrants, the optimism of Payen-Dumont is difficult to grasp.  Patricia Wollesen, the German immigrant who had trouble finding work as an educator of disabled children, found it difficult to adjust to life in Canada.  “We got used to a different way of living,” she says.  “I worked in Italy, as a psycho-motor re-educator.  But [in Canada] I became a mother.  I had my children from 1985 to 1993, so I was at home, with the kids, being a mother and so on.”  Wollesen would search for work, but her credentials were ignored.  “My studies of physical health education were not accepted here,” she says, explaining that she had to essentially pursue another degree.  “I went back to the University of Toronto and did some courses so that I had my Bachelor’s degree in Physical Health Education.”

Many professions in Canada require not only certifications, but also hands-on experience from within Canada’s border – foreign experience is not applicable.  Noorani explains that this is a problem he has tried to deal with in the pages of The Canadian Immigrant.  “I met a cardiac surgeon in Toronto in a restaurant and he wasn’t eating with me,” Noorani says sadly.  “He was washing dishes in the kitchen. This is a man who has held a beating heart in his hand, and now he’s holding dirty dishes.”  It’s almost impossible for these doctors, however, to get the experience they need to get the jobs they want.  It’s a catch-22 without a solution.  “These doctors have taken the Canadian exam and have passed the Canadian exam,” explains Noorani.  “But they’re not being allowed to get into an internship, because there’s limited seats out there.”

Wollesen’s experience echoes the story told by Noorani.  “I do have to say that everyone that I went to were very kind to me,” Wollesen says coyly, pausing to remember her struggle. “But my degree was in physical health education and I wasn’t an occupational health therapist, I was not a physiotherapist, and it was a very closed-knit community.”  Unable to break into the established career track, she started volunteering with handicapped youth at Metro Toronto Community Living.  “At MTCL, some mothers got to know me, and in that way I started to work,” she says with pride, noting that she finally reached her goal of working with Canadian children on a one-on-one basis.

But Wollesen faced further challenges as she tried to set up her business.  Associations for children with disabilities would not allow her to advertise her private practice, and more established firms would not cooperate with her.  “I would ask them, ‘May I put some fliers up here?’  They didn’t want that!” she says.  Eventually she started getting references from doctors’ and paediatricians’ offices and was able to do the work she had dreamed of doing since arriving in Canada years earlier.

Deena Ladd, the Executive Director of the Workers Action Centre, sympathizes with Wollesen’s experience.  “Regulatory bodies for each profession make it very difficult for someone to get into a profession,” she says, asserting that the overlapping regulations are the major roadblock to success for immigrants in Canada.  “There’s a need for a lot of advocacy work and policy work to challenge those regulatory bodies to change and make access to those professions easier.”  Ladd’s organization tries to overcome these barriers by providing temporary jobs that ensure that immigrants get the “Canadian work experience” that they desperately need to hold upper-level jobs in Canada.

Nick Noorani, the publisher of The Canadian Immigrant, is also very familiar with the barriers erected by professional organizations. He hears enough tales of success and failure to put him in a positive mood, then a terrible mood, several times each day.  So what motivates him to work to make life better for Canadian immigrant communities? “My focus is to help immigrants. I don’t have any political leanings. I don’t have any political ambitions,” he says.  He still offers new immigrants his book, widely distributes his magazine, and accepts speaking engagements regularly.  “My focus is how to help immigrants succeed in the country that I have adopted.”

In his magazine and in his speeches, Noorani puts the most effort into expressing the commonalities between immigrants to Canada from around the world.  He finds that almost all immigrants are of the same mindset in terms of three key issues.  First, their desire for success:  “The professional associations talk about how immigrants just want to integrate,” says Noorani.  “But no, they don’t want to integrate, they want to succeed.”  Second, all immigrants want role models who have done well in Canada: “They leave their role models behind, and the media keeps talking about doctors who drive cabs.  So they need to hear about who succeeded and how they succeeded.”  Third, most immigrants face identical challenges: “You may come from Chile, Brazil, India, Pakistan, China, or Korea – your challenges will be the same.”

With these three key issues in mind, Noorani and his researchers and writers keep The Canadian Immigrant focused on a neatly expressed mandate: “to inform, educate, and motivate.”  They also keep the magazine multi-ethnic, and stand fast to their belief that all immigrants in Canada desire success, want role models, and face the same challenges.  Noorani and his team believe the last aspect of their mandate – to motivate – is the most important.

But sometimes The Canadian Immigrant acknowledges that educating new immigrants is more important.  Noorani tells a bittersweet story that is amusing, but sadly true of so many immigrant families:  A Korean family that had just arrived in a major Canadian city were touring a house that they wanted to purchase when the real estate agent informed them that “there were no skeletons in the closet;” ashen-faced, the family bolted down the street in search of a less ghoulish residence.  “Think about that phrase,” says Noorani.  “They just didn’t understand that it doesn’t mean it literally.”  In addition to including anecdotes like the one about the superstitious Korean family, The Canadian Immigrant offers feature articles about Canadian customs like Halloween, to psychologically prepare recent immigrants for that night of witchery and evil.

According to the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, even if immigrants are functional in English or French, they frequently lack the professional jargon necessary for a successful career.  “We put those people in a class where they can learn the language of their profession here in Canada,” explains Payen Dumont, noting that these programs are usually developed in conjunction with universities or non-profit organizations.  “We are constantly responding to needs. These programs are developed based on what proposals people make,” she says.  “It’s for when they just need a bit of help to get over the last hurdle, to bridge that last gap.”

And even if immigrants speak English well and have a solid grasp of professional jargon, they still need to learn how to mingle and socialize with their new colleagues.  “Networking is so alien to so many immigrants,” says Noorani.  “What they do in their country of origin is someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone.”  In Canada, he explains, it’s about creating your own network and finding ways to give to and take from the contacts you make over the course of your career.

The last gap to succeeding as an immigrant in Canada is often the most difficult, especially when the immigration system itself sets up ambitious newcomers for failure.  The Canadian government uses a point-based system to evaluated potential immigrants; so many points are assigned for education, language abilities, work experience, being of employable age, and other criteria.  “The point system is flawed,” says Noorani.  “The government gives minimal points for language and they give high points for education and higher points for your work experience. As a result you have someone in Canada who is coming as an immigrant with a Ph.D. and several years of experience, but cannot speak the language. How is that person going to succeed?”

Deena Ladd from the Workers Action Centre agrees with Noorani.  “How people are brought into Canada is a challenge,” she says, explaining that most immigrants are confused as to their own qualifications by the time they have arrived in Canada.  “The only way they can come in is through these draconian immigration rules that say they have to come in without any real status, and then they are vulnerable to the types of exploitation we see,” she says, referring to the poor employment with offensively low wages being offered to highly educated professionals.

“It’s been the slowness of the staff, the unnecessary paperwork, the lack of trust in people’s credentials,” Chan says, explaining that he has been living and working in Canada for three years, but only received his residency permit a week ago.  He tells a story about a colleague from India who studied in the Netherlands and worked for several years as a professor at George Washington University in the United States.  After successfully applying for a teaching position at York University, the immigration services blocked his work permit application until he could provide evidence of his ability to speak English – despite the fact that he had been working at an American university for years.  In Chan’s case, the government is almost as difficult, being adamant about only counting one year of the last three towards his resident status.  “It’s a large source of stress and frustration,” he says.  “As a result, there is an under-utilization of skills.”

In many cases, says Noorani, the under-utilization of the skills offered by immigrants has contributed to the vulnerability of the Canadian economy to demographic and social shifts.  “The fact of the matter is that Canada has a declining birth rate and an ageing baby-boomer population,” he explains, noting that until the most recent recession, industries throughout Canada had complained about a labour shortage.  “So the fact is that we’ve got to start working on getting our immigrants to start succeeding faster in Canada.”

Noorani explains that some employers capitalize on the under-appreciated and under-utilized immigrant communities in Canada, recruiting loyal employees from tight-knit cultural and national groups.  “The top employers, the banks or the wireless corporations, they get it,” he says.  “But Canada is comprised of these small and medium enterprises that don’t have a human resources department,” says Noorani. “All of [the professional organizations and smaller employers] – I’m going to go out on a limb here – all of them are protectionists.”  These smaller companies are less likely to take a bet on the unfamiliar qualifications of foreigners, preferring instead to opt for more established, more conventional – and perhaps even less qualified – citizens of the country in which they do business.  To remedy this problem, Noorani speaks to companies and professional organizations across Canada, encouraging them to put faith in the skills of immigrants.

Deena Ladd from the Workers Action Centre is less delicate than Noorani in considering the factors that discourage small businesses in Canada from hiring immigrants.  “There are systematic racist barriers in the labour market that target newcomers,” she says.  “It makes it impossible for immigrants to get into their field.”  Nonetheless, she mentions that she has seen progress over the years, with domestic employers becoming more accepting of qualifications issued abroad.

Despite these encouraging examples, Noorani points out that sometimes immigrants are their own worst enemies when it comes to making themselves employable.  Too often, immigrants have the qualifications and the experience needed for a job, yet they lack the charisma to market themselves effectively.  “[Job searching and networking] is a paradigm shift for immigrants and they’re still not getting it,” he says.  “Even if immigrants are overqualified – employers could be getting a Mercedes for the price of a Toyota! – immigrants don’t have the expertise to convince employers.”

Most would agree that immigrants coming to Canada have a hard time, but gain access to a plethora of opportunities.  They might not be confident that their professional qualifications will be recognized, and they might doubt their own ability to join their new country’s workforce.  Their language skills might be rudimentary and their ability to communicate ambitions and ideas might be lacking.  Their cultural habits might clash with those of native-born Canadians, and they might find it difficult to meet more established Canadians who are not fellow expatriates.  The government and various agencies might be unsupportive or indifferent to their struggle to create a new life in a new country, far from the place of their birth and education.

Although some have been successful, these challenges have proven too great for too many. Over 20% of immigrants to Canada leave within a year, unable to bear the humiliation and hardship of starting a new life.  The unexpected welcome they receive, which is an amalgamation of a lack of challenges and opportunities, is not only disheartening, but also economically and socially crippling.

Wollesen, the immigrant from Germany who works with handicapped children, can recall many friends who could not persevere as immigrants in Canada.  “I say that Canada is a great country, but I know a lot of people that came to Canada to work and do things, and they did not have the strength,” she says, explaining that many people arrive hoping that it will be easily to achieve their dream, not realizing how hard they will have to fight just to get by.  Other colleagues of Wollesen’s, however, have persevered; one of her friends went through medical school in its entirety for a second time in order to be allowed to practise in Canada.  “Who comes here to Canada,” she says, “we have to be of a special breed, we have to be very strong people.”

With that said, Wollesen wouldn’t trade her Canadian identity for anything in the world.  “Once you live here for a certain time, you really get to appreciate the freedom and the beautiful things that this country has to offer.”  She explains that the multiculturalism of Canada never loses its appeal, and its value to Canadian society is unquestionable.  People like her form a loyalty that can’t be tarnished.  “Going back to your own country – it is then not even your own country, because things change, and you change,” says Wollesen about the various times she has returned to Germany since moving to Canada in 1985.  “What we have here is something that I don’t think you can find in other parts of the world, but you really have to fight for it.”