Having a university degree may give immigrants an edge to get into Canada, but once here they're less likely to find jobs than those with degrees who are born here.
"It's really, really hard," Winnipeg family doctor Jay Buenafe, who immigrated from the Philippines in 2002, said Friday.
The latest Statistics Canada survey reveals university-educated immigrants aged 25 to 54 who arrived in Canada within the previous five years were less likely to be employed in 2007 than their Canadian-born counterparts. This was true regardless of the country in which they obtained their degree, according to the report titled The Canadian Immigrant Labour Market in 2007.
It took Buenafe three years before he could practise medicine in this country. He was required to go back to school, write many exams and prove himself on the job -- including assisting in knee and hip replacement surgeries --- before his credentials were recognized.
"I consider myself one of the luckiest guys," said the married father of two whose practice is at a clinic on Jefferson Avenue. "Most immigrants with post-secondary degrees -- not just doctors, but teachers and other professions ?-- encounter lots of difficulties."
The StatsCan survey found that Asian post-secondary grads fared a little better in Manitoba than the national average.
Immigrants in Manitoba with a university degree from Asia have an 85.5 per cent employment rate, while the national average for the same group was a 74.9 per cent employment rate, said StatsCan's Jason Gilmore.
"The influence of Filipino-educated people is showing up in the Manitoba numbers," said StatsCan's Jason Gilmore.
"Many are educated in English and Tagalog," he said. "Their university degrees are structured on the North American system which may help in their attempts to find employment here."
Having a firm grasp of English is key, said Emmie Joaquin, the Philippines-educated editor-in-chief of Pilipino Express.
She said English is one of the Philippines two official languages.
"English is the medium used in school," she said. "The country has so many languages/dialects, plus most textbooks are in the English language, and to translate them into the various languages would be a gargantuan task. "
Joaquin said universities there are modelled after the U.S. system.
"Many professional Filipinos (like doctors, architects, engineers, etc) find it easier to be accredited in the U.S. than in Canada."
The Philippines' system is so well recognized the country suffers from a brain drain of professionals.
Many of the well-educated brains that end up in Canada upgrade their schooling when they get here, according to StatsCan.
One in five recent immigrant university graduates were attending school in Canada in 2007, even though they already had a degree. The proportion of immigrants attending school was even higher among those who already held a Canadian degree, the report says.
carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
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