dbd33

I can't say I have very much sympathy for them, if you want to work as an engineer, then you should go somewhere where you are qualified to do so. It shouldn't be news that you can't practise in certain countries. I think it's bizarre that the government recruits such people, knowing they'll be underemployed and frustrated, while the country depends on people they won't legally admit, but then they're the government. What you gonna do ?

Thinking about schooling, my partner started college here while a tourist, she'd been going to school for some weeks before she obtained a study permit so I suppose she could have gone on indefinitely. Health is a problem for the unstatused, at least the poor unstatused, but I don't think education is. I'll ask in the pub, there are lots of tradespeople there, I know they're mainly undocumented and that several have school aged children, there must be some common arrangement.

Posidrive

Touched a nerve here. Fair enough to expect people to check whether or not you will be allowed to practice in a contry before you go there and find that you can't find work.

But, the lack of recipricosity is damn ridiculous. A Canadian can practice as an Engineer in the UK but it doesn't work vice vera. This is even more ridiculous in the oil industry where almost every one works to US standards. It is not surprising that they are so short of chemical engineers in Alberta.

Cowtown

I could be really cynical and suggest that's because the professional body are only interested in ensuring its members get paid top whack, but that would a very irresponsible comment to make and I'm not that cynical ... they're simply ensuring the quality of service provided by their members.

CalgaryBlade

I know a couple of civil engineers who moved here (Calgary) from the UK in the last year or so and neither have had to re-qualify, they just walked into CE jobs. They tell me that some regulations are different but that's all.

Cowtown

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. It pays to check before you apply ...

Posidrive

You don't have to requalify as such. Rather get one years experience under the supervision of an Albertan PE then take a work practice and ethics exam. I don't really have a problem with that, although some employers do. Many projects required experienced engineers to supervise teams of others, so you can't initially slot into these positions and the younger engineers aren't capable of filling these positions.

What gets my goat is having to be supervised by someone with 20 years less experience who has to have me explain basic engineering concepts to them.

Cowtown

I spent my first year here being micromanaged by people without any relevant IT certifications - none of them would even get a look in nowadays if I was looking to hire - grin and bear it now, one day you'll have the opportunity for ample pay back ... that's the reward for working hard as an immigrant

1066

This has been covered several times already.

No, they shouldn't complain. As Engineers - Doctors etc, they should be intelligent enough to find out what they are getting themselves into by applying for immigration in the first place.

If they find these things out after they arrive, then they deserve everything they get .... or don't get, as the case may be.

dbd33

I duly asked in the pub and got a response, from a school vice-principal no less, that the TDSB has a policy of not asking about parental status so as to avoid discriminating against the children of the unstatused. At first this seems bizarre but, I suppose, it's not the children's fault that the parents don't have their papers in order. Toronto's a city of immigrants and, inevitably, many of them will have come to fill actual jobs rather than quotas, someone offered a job as a chef or a bricklayer today is not likely to put it on hold while he or she gets a masters in philosophy and learns French so as to be quota compliant. I'm sure there are unstatused people who come to be gangsters but the ones I've met came to fill an immediate vacancy.

I went on a search to try to confirm the TDSB policy and was hugely amused to stumble across the Ontario Human Rights Commision's musings that there is discrimination againsts students based on their immigration status :

http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en_text/consul...chools_9.shtml

The only reference to the TDSB requiring proof of immigration status I could find was here :

http://www.tdsb.on.ca/wwwdocuments/p..._Fall_2005.pdf

on close reading it says that, in the absence of proof of status, prospective students will not be refused tuition but a fee applies. I believe that's generally true as this search turned up the websites of various organisations lobbying for the fees to be waived in the case of students from various countries (Ethiopia and Somalia, for example).

My impression is that the big problem for people living here without status isn't finding schools but the risk of being involved with the police for some minor reason ; getting a traffic ticket, being mugged, something of that type, and incidentally being deported. That'd bugger up the domestic schedule, "cub scout meetings are suspended pending Akela sneaking back in to the country".

skigordi

For anyone heading elsewhere it is still worth checking. In York Region (the area north of Toronto around Richmond Hill and up to Newmarket) has a central school registration centre for all newcomers and immigration status is one of the things they are checking. The schools in this region will not accept a newcomer until they have been processed and checked by the centre.

Cowtown

The Calgary Board of Education checks immigration status. The annual form sent home with your child has a box to declare immigration status (pre-printed from the central office) so your class teacher also has that information.