本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛By INGRID PERITZ AND JILL MAHONEY
Wednesday, February 12, 2003 – Page A7
MONTREAL and EDMONTON -- Immigrants, who supplied the brawn that built Canada, are increasingly supplying the country with its brains.
Abandoning jobs washing the nation's dishes and sweeping its floors, more and more immigrants have settled in Canada to program its computers, develop its Web sites and design its software, census data indicate.
Figures released yesterday show that in 2001, 24 per cent of newcomers held high-skill jobs requiring university degrees, compared with 13 per cent in 1996. While most recent immigrants still scratch out their living in low-skill jobs, the proportion of those doing so is shrinking.
"It's a major change," Diane Galarneau, a senior labour-market analyst with Statistics Canada, said yesterday.
"Immigrants coming to Canada are more and more educated, and they're filling more qualified positions."
The trend has had a major impact on Canadian cities such as Ottawa, which became a magnet during the technology boom of the late nineties for high achievers from India, Korea, China and other countries.
Typical were young whiz kids such as Bhalla Ketan, who left his native India in the early nineties to study at the University of Calgary. By 2000, he was launching a start-up company in Ottawa with four co-founders: two from India, one from Egypt and another from Guatemala.
Mr. Ketan has a masters degree. Three of his co-founders have doctorates. "Canada is a great place for immigrants with skills," said Mr. Ketan, 31, whose optical-telecommunications company, Ceyba, now has 200 employees. "The sky's the limit if you want to work hard.
"It's all there for you."
It's not unusual to hear clusters of employees speaking Cantonese or Russian, he said. Staff members come from about 25 different countries.
Jeffrey Dale, president and chief executive officer of the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation, said skilled immigrants helped Ottawa flourish during its big-growth years.
"Ottawa's technology industry would not have been able to grow without the support of foreign-trained workers. They fuelled the boom. They were the resources that allowed Ottawa to grow so rapidly."
The census data was not all good news for immigrants. Statistics Canada found a growing gap in joblessness between immigrants and non-immigrants, especially outside Toronto. The gap was especially great among women.
New immigrants had an unemployment rate double the national average, and an employment rate 16 percentage points below Canadian-born citizens.
In the seventies, employment of younger immigrants was close to that of Canadian-born workers. A gap started to open in the early eighties and broadened in the early nineties. The latest data suggest recent immigrants are struggling with a tougher labour market and with barriers to get their credentials recognized, Ms. Galarneau said.
"Immigrants are having more trouble integrating into the work force," she said.
Calgary's thriving economy also lured a large share of skilled international workers. The employment rate for recent male immigrants in Calgary was 83 per cent, higher than the rate for non-immigrants for Canada as a whole.
The finding that Calgary is drawing immigrants did not surprise Murray Sigler, president of the city's Chamber of Commerce.
"It's a reflection of the fundamentals of our city in terms that it is growing, it is a place for opportunity," he said. "Canada is a country of opportunity, and within Canada, Calgary has stood out and most predict that it will continue to do so."更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net